The Brooklyn Rail: The Best Art Books of 2025
Wednesday, Dec 31, 2025
The text in In Cars: On Diana, like its images, is written in impressionistic brushstrokes, free verse couplets that range from the poignant and personal—like when Shapton recounts her mother telling her “You and Lady Diana are the same star sign”—to the aphoristic, “Photogenics, like wit, is a talent of timing.” The late appearance of the poetic interlude encourages readers of the book to view the paintings with their own associations of Princess Diana before reconsidering them alongside the text, which is itself a reconsideration of Diana as icon, Princess, and woman. The book is both a love letter to Diana and a study of the brief threshold of time, when “She steps from a car, arm extended / for a handshake again and again.”