[1][2][3] Webb's books include Hot Light/Half-Made Worlds (1986), Under a Grudging Sun (1989), From The Sunshine State (1996), Amazon (1997), Crossings (2003), Istanbul (2007), The Suffering of Light (2011), La Calle (2016), as well as with photographer Rebecca Norris Webb, his wife and creative partner—Violet Isle (2009), Memory City (2014), Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb on Street Photography and the Poetic Image (2014), Slant Rhymes (2017), and Brooklyn: The City Within (2019).

Born in San Francisco, Webb was raised in New England.

[4] He became interested in photography as a high school student at The Putney School and in 1972 attended the Apeiron Workshops in Millerton, New York, where he met Magnum photographers Bruce Davidson and Charles Harbutt.

[6] He has received commissions from the High Museum of Art as well as the Banesto Foundation in Spain.

Webb now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York with his wife, Rebecca Norris Webb, who is also a photographer;[7] they have collaborated on a number of books[8][9] Non-English Language Publications