Abstract Between 1930 and 1940 ‘Arts et Metiers Graphiques’ of Paris published a series of annual volumes dedicated to international photography. Out of these, Schirmer and Mosel have chosen 169 photographs and brought them out under the title Photography of the Thirties, a welcome idea, coinciding this year with the Berlin exhibition Tendencies of the Twenties. This period of art history is now rapidly becoming a subject of general interest, and adequate retrospective publications dealing with the photography of these decades did not exist. In the pages of this book we find photographs of exciting beauty with a flair and flavour that are characteristic of their time. Syberberg describes some of the mental associations they evoke as ‘Stromlinienformige Aufbruchsstimmung’, ‘Zivilisationsgluck’ and ‘Fortschrittsasthetik’, and points to their coolness and artificiality. Jean Cocteau and Gloria Swanson are among the selected personalities.