Nick Zinner is a photographer. But that’s not why most people are going to pick up his new book, “I Hope You Are All Happy Now.” Zinner also plays the guitar in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, one of the more bizarre success stories of the 21st century.

How bizarre? How successful? Just look at the photos. Look at the bruises, the blood, the vomit, the (HUGE) crowds, the backrooms, the breakdowns, the beds (never made), the papparazzi. The scars.

What many may not know is that Zinner was a photographer long before “Maps” (the band’s indelible mark on the American songbook, even if “Miles Away” is better.) He attended Bard College, travelogued Europe and toiled in commercial dark rooms for the latter part of the ’90s. Zinner has released two books with writer Zachary Lipez and designer Stacy Wakefield, “No Seats on the Party Car” and “Slept in Beds,” and had exhibitions in New York.

But “I Hope You Are All Happy Now” (Evil Twin Publications, $19.95) is the first exclusively about his days and nights on the road with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which takes his point-and-shoot art to a new level of cultural significance. That’s not to say his pictures don’t stand up just fine on their own. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have simply touched more lives with their music than Zinner has with his camera.

Zinner took snapshots every day while on tour, and in the process immortalized images of life on the precipice of fame.

Honestly, it ain’t all that pretty. The exhaustion eminating from his portraits of Karen O is palpable. The array of different cities and different clubs blend together for the voyeur. The beds, so many beds, come at the end of “I Hope You Are All Happy Now,” and look all the more welcome for it.

Musical group the Yeah Yeah Yeahs - from left, Brian Chase, Nick Zinner and Karen O. - arrive for the MTV Video Music Awards in Miami in August 2004. Zinner recently released a collection of photographs from the group's concerts.

The book also features essays by Lipez, Jim Jarmusch and David Cross, as well as an interview Zinner did with Vice editor Jesse Pearson.

Cross writes that he takes pleasure in removing the pictures from their context and imagining the different scenarios that could have led to each image. But it’s the context that makes these roles so compelling. The third chapter, “On the Road,” presents times and places with brief qualifiers, like “Smashed Poster, Bristol, February 2003: YYY almost broke up the next day.” The images become short stories, and the short stories carry the rest of the book.

Zinner and Pearson chat briefly about exoticism during their interview, calling it “an empty aesthetic.” If left to the coffee table, “I Hope You Are All Happy Now” could be misconstrued as the same. A nonchalant flip through the pages might turn tedious – 85 crowds and 65 beds at a page per minute can start to blend together. But give Zinner the time, and he’ll give you the time of his life.