Seminal female artists, powerful social themes and the next generation of talent come together in this weekend’s top international exhibitions.

Tom Baker offers a playful glimpse at the shifting role of materials. Taking the role of the alchemist, he attempts to purify and transform the elements.

In the 1930s, the US was struggling through the Great Depression. The Art Institute of Chicago explore the era’s artwork and photography.

Magnum Streetwise, a new Thames & Hudson volume, features more than 300 examples of street photography pulled from the archives.

Aesthetica selects top art and photography publications for November. These books look at activism, belonging and pre-digital visual culture.

Art exhibitions are constantly evolving. The ING Discerning Eye Exhibition offers a new approach to curation, featuring 450 small works.

Dora Maar’s photographs are icons of surrealism. They play with the unusual, creating uncanny combinations of objects, textures and forms.

For its eighth cycle, the Prix Pictet award in photography and sustainability turns its lens on the theme of “hope.” 12 artists respond.

Aesthetica selects must-see shows for early November. Each exhibition reflects the human condition in today’s changing world.

Miami-based Anastasia Samoylova’s FloodZone is a series responding to the problem of rising sea levels. It is an account on the climatic knife-edge.

A rainbow of geometric shapes obscures the faces of Julie Cockburn’s found photographs. Bright colours transform vintage studio portraits.

Tom Spach’s book is aesthetically compelling, leaving readers to re-assess their emotions about intertwining concrete and plantlike.

The ING Discerning Eye Exhibition, which showcases both emerging and established artists, returns to Mall Galleries, London, this November.

Groundbreaking photography. Expansive natural landscapes. Cultural exploration. Top shows use the lens to ask key questions about identity.

The new publication ‘Model City Pyongyang’ is a photographic journey through the architecture of North Korea’s ‘model’ utopia.

Paris Photo returns to the historic Grand Palais in November. The 23rd edition surveys compelling photography over nearly two centuries,

Aperture and Dawoud Bey collaborate on a new workshop publication that distils approaches, teachings and insights about photography.

Sound installation, street photography and visionary design. Recommended shows move from 20th century history to future civilisations.

Bloomberg New Contemporaries returns for 2019, highlighting the next generation of contemporary visual artists in an expansive show.

The Walled City of Kowloon in Hong Kong was demolished in 1994. Greg Girard and Ian Lambot captured the locale, which existed for 50 years.