This is the second to last in a series of reports on great places to find books on the arts and culture. If you're looking for something special for that someone who's obsessed with photography, the Aperture Book Center should be on your source list. The annual holiday sale is now on and whatever your budget is, you can save some real dollars.

For starters, you can get a one-year gift subscription to Aperture magazine, two-time winner of the National Magazine Award, for half price. That's just $20 for four issues, and your lucky friend will view the state of the art as it is now, and was before. As well as an article about Japanese photographer Hara Mikiko, who was featured in the May 24 issue of DART, the current issue includes a feature about contemporary German photography and a piece by Vince Aletti on Vogue magazine under the legendary editor, Diana Vreeland.

Above: Aperture Book Center and Gallery. Right: Anju, a limited-edition print by Elena Dorfman. Photos courtesy of Aperture Foundation.

The Book Center is a minimalist's dream of spare simplicity. When I stopped in last week, all the new titles, and many of the classics, were arranged with covers facing forward along a run of shelves opposite the gallery space. The non-profit foundation, committed to advancing the appreciation of photography as a fine art, takes a fearless approach to cutting edge work. In 1972, for example, Aperture was the only house willing to publish Diane Arbus's first monograph, which accompanied an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. The book has been reprinted a dozen times, with more than 100,000 copies sold.

Under the editorial direction of Lesley Martin, recently appointed to the post of publisher, Aperture books have taken a new direction. Not only are the books pushing the boundaries of ink on paper in terms of print quality; some break with tradition entirely with respect to manufacturing and binding. For Uncovered, an almost toy-like book printed on hefty boards, Thomas Allen appropriated cover images from the pulpiest of pulp fiction paperbacks and refashioned them into witty back room scenarios of femme-fatales and hard-boiled private eyes. Photographed in shallow focus, the images have a dreamy retro effect reminiscent of the View-Master stereoscopic toys that inspired Allen.

Paris-New York-Shanghai is Dutch conceptual artist Hans Eijkelboom's photographic index of three cities that are, or promise to be, the cultural capitals of their times-19^th, 20^th and 21^st centuries, respectively. For the past decade, the photographer has obsessively documented ordinary people in everyday situations, classifying his subjects as to their garb, their companions, and their activities. The unique 3-way binding enables readers to simultaneously compare pages of images from each city. The accompanying exhibition will remain on view at Aperture Gallery through January 3, 2008.

If size matters, there are many choices available here. Take a look at On the Beach: Photographs by Richard Misrach, with spreads that measure 20 x 32 inches. These images of people dispersed on the sand, photographed from high above, impart a fragile sense of balance between control and surrender to the elements. The book's size echoes the colossal scale of prints in the exhibition, which closes next week at the Art Institute of Chicago, and after a showing in Honolulu, will open the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., in June 2008.

Moving up the scale in size and price, my next stop was the limited editions print gallery to the right of the main space. Interestingly, the least and most expensive prints are by Modernist master, Paul Strand: one for $382.50 and another for $4250. In between, there is much to suit connoisseurs of contemporary and classic photography. Anju by Elena Dorfman (above, right), a digital C-print on 10 x 8 inch paper, is now $637.50. The Wimmera, 1864 #1 by Polixeni Papapetrou, a pigment ink print on 24 x 24 inch paper, is now $1275. Havana Methodist Church by William Christenberry, a digital pigment print on 11 x 14 inch paper is $2000.

The Aperture holiday sale is on through January 3, 2008, with 30% off all books, 15% off most limited edition prints, and 50% off gift subscriptions to the magazine. Aperture Book Center, 547 West 27th Street, 4th floor, New York, NY 10001. Tel: (212) 505-5555.