FISH FACE: Portraits

With around 200 breathtaking close-ups of the world's most exotic, beautiful and even frankly ugly fish, scuba-diver and photographer David Doubilet has created one of the most stylish volumes in the Phaidon imprint. For colour it is hard to beat the multicoloured bands of the Stoplight Parrot Fish, the orange and turquoise Indonesian Beaked Leather Jacket, or Egypt's Red Sea Coral Grouper with its sharp white teeth offset by a rich red spotty face. Extraordinary in both shape and colouring is the Tomato Clown Fish photographed in Papua New Guinea, while the Spinyhead Blenny from Cuba looks startled by its own luminous weirdness. The close-up of a Stingray from Grand Cayman Island is both perfect in its expanse of whiteness and disturbing in its parody of human facial features. Ragged Tooth Sharks have the same eerie quality, with the sinister addition of the mesh of teeth revealed in their predatory mouths, while a Great White Shark has fewer but more effective teeth. Wild staring eyes are a feature of many fish including the Australian Morwong, the Yellow Damsel Fish, the Map Puffer Fish, or the South African Hotlips Triplefin, where the eyes glow at least as redly as the lips. Many fish have extraordinary camouflage such as the mottled Stone Fish of the Great Barrier Reef, the Australian Leafy Sea Dragon or the Bicolour Parrot Fish from the Red Sea. Around 350 unnumbered and gorgeous pages, rare softback.