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Lucy Davies picks the best recent art books, from Harlem to Vienna to Japan

Dawoud Bey (Yale, £18) began photographing the Harlem district of New York in 1975, when he was 22 years old. The area had been popular for photographers since its renaissance in the Thirties, and more so since the civil rights movements of the Sixties, but Bey sought out instances outside of time, removing cars, fashion, anything that might date the picture for delicate moments that suggest the longer arc of history.

Japanese Dream (Hatje Cantz, £90) is a half-metre-long volume of some 50 works by photographer and war correspondent Felice Beato, who arrived in Yokohama in 1863 and spent the following 20 years picturing the local landscape, geishas and samurai as well as farmers and fishermen. He was an expert in hand-coloured photography, and these vivid impressions helped shape the Western view of Japan as a beautifully exotic paradise. As Vienna celebrates Gustav Klimt’s 150th birthday, Klimt: Up Close and Personal (Thames & Hudson, £35) seeks out the famously secretive man behind the paintings. A series of letters, postcards and snapshots allow the artist to speak for himself.

Hijacked III (Kehrer Verlag, £39.99) is a biennial survey of photographic talent from both these shores and down under, charting new directions in concept and technique. Sourced through blogs and social networks, the chosen photographers provide a thicket of narratives that might otherwise escape our radar.

Finally, Mrs Merryman’s Collection (MACK, £35) is a hoard of postcards collected by Anne Sophie Merryman’s grandmother. While the two never met, they are linked by the body of images each of them loved, and the book is as much a lyrical, dreamlike journey as the physical one suggested by the postcards. There’s a secret twist to the story – guess it if you can.