LANGE, Dorethea

Land of the Free. Poems by Archibald Mac Leish. Photographs by Dorthea Lange, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, Carl Mydans, and others. Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1938. 93 pp. Quarto. Clothbound. Library protected dust jacket. 88 full-page black-and-white illustrations.

"Land of the Free is the opposite of a book of poems illustrated by photographs. It is a book of photographs illustrated by a poem," said Mac Leish. A fascinating depression-era document that features numerous Farm Security Administation images by Dorthea Lange, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Ben Shahn, and others. One of the first FSA collections to be published, Land of the Free remains one of the most important. Scarce in its original dust jacket.

two closed tears - on the front dust jacket.

SMITH, W. Eugene

Japan...a chapter of image. A photographic essay by W. Eugene Smith with Carole Thomas. Hitachi, Tokyo, 1963. 79 pp. quarto. First edition. Handmade Japanese rag paper over board. Numerous black-and-white reproductions.

"In 1961, W. Eugene Smith, the photojournalist, was commissioned by Hitachi Ltd. to photograph the company's operations throughout Japan...Printed in the dark, moody style that Smith favored, these images record not only the company's operations but also Japanese society at a time when the country was just beginning to emerge as an industrial power after World War II.

"Smith delighted in recording contrasts between traditional Japanese culture and the new industry. One picture, for example, shows a group of women in kimonos and scarves waiting for a bus on a busy street; another depicts a tiny geisha figurine amid piles of rubble. Other pictures reveal Smith's deeply romantic view of the world. In a shot of pigeons sitting on the decorated roof beams of a traditional building, the birds bill and coo, their necks echoing the curving beams.

Still other images celebrate industrial power, in strongly graphic compositions that in some cases recall Constructivist works of the 1920's.

But as always in Smith's passionate photographs, it is the people in front of his lens who most strongly attract his attention, and his sympathy.--Charles Hagen, The New York Times

SMITH, W. Eugene

Minamata. Rare inscribed book.

Words and photographs by W. Eugene Smith and Aileen M. Smith. Alskog-Sensorium/Holt, Rinehart, Winston, New York, 1975. 192 pp. First edition. Signed on half title page. Inscription reads To Ralph, So Long A Time & Friend, 1975.

Large quarto. Stiff wrappers. Numerous black-and-white reproductions.

Also included is the Portfolio -Life, Sacred And Profane.

Perhaps Smith's best work, Minimata documents the Japanese struggle against the ravages of pollution. Defining a classic photojournalist trope, it opens with the source of pollution and procedes to expose its very human effects, the struggle and protests, the joy of victory and the legacy of careless destruction. It was within this essay that Smith's haunting photographs of Tomoko first appeared. The images chosen show the industrial pollution, the disfiguring effects of Minamata Disease on the people of the area, protests against the polluters, and the members of the environmental disputes board debating the situation. "Photography is a small voice at best," writes Smith, "Daily we are deluged with photography at its worst - until its drone of superficiality threatens to numb our sensivity to the image. Then why photograph? ... Because sometimes - just sometimes - a photograph or photographs can strike our senses into greater awareness...photographs can demand of emotions enough to be a catalyst to thinking."

ELLEN MARK, Mary

A Cry for Help. Stories of Homelessness and Hope. Photographs by Mary Ellen Mark. Texts by Andrew Cuomo, Robert Coles, and Mark's subjects. Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996. 103 pp., 50 duotone illustrations, 9½x9½".

Mary Ellen Mark's latest title combines her trademark empathetic photojournalism with text by her homeless subjects. The images are tough, probing inquiries presenting a 1990s view of "how the other half lives." The texts explore the life of homelessness and help explain these people's plight complementing the depth of Mark's vision.

The books is inscribed in 1997 by Mary Ellen Mark.

KOUDELKA, Josef

Exiles. Photographs by Josef Koudelka. Prepared and designed by Robert Delpire. Essay by Czeslaw Milosz. Delpire, Paris, 1997. Unpaged. Oblong quarto. Second edition. Clothbound in photo-illustrated dust jacket. Black-and-white illustrations. Printed and bound by Jean Genoud, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Koudelka's follow-up to Gypsies is a study of the physical and spiritual state of exile, investigating the lives of people in that situation, for one reason or another. Koudelka's brilliant photographs are nearly mythical in their portrayal of what John Szarkowski calls "the prototypical rituals." Nobel Prize-winning author Czeslaw Milosz contributes a stirring text, speaking vividly to the soul in search of a spiritual homeland.

CARTIER-BRESSON, Henri

About Russia. Photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Viking Press, New York, 1974. 155 pp. Hardbound in dust jacket. 141 gravure reproductions.

"I am neither an economist nor a photographer of monuments, and I am not much of a journalist either. What I am trying to do more than anything else is to observe life."--Cartier-Bresson

CARTIER-BRESSON, Henri

Man and Machine. Photographs and text by Cartier-Bresson. Viking, New York, 1971. Clothbound in library protected dust jacket. Numerous black-and-white reproductions.

"By his personal example of human control over a technical tool, and through his profound artistry, Cartier-Bresson reveals to us in this new book the interdependence of subject and object..."

BOUBAT, Edouard

Pauses. Photographs and text by Edouard Boubat. Introduction by Claude Nori. Bookking International/Contrejour, Paris, 1988. Second edition. 175 pp. Text in French. Quarto. Hardbound with photo-illustrated dust jacket. Gravure plates. Biography, bibliography, and captions included as appendices.

"The fundamental mechanism of Edouard Boubat's work is autobiography. For him, strolling in the neighbourhood is as fulfilling as travelling to distant countries...Edouard Boubat seems to me important not just because of his place in the history of photography, but also because, at a time when photography claims its independence and autonomy, he stimulates us, makes us want to wonder, to taste life, to preserve silence around us, so as not to spoil the fragile beauty of the instant--even though this may mean taking photographs."--from Claude Nori's Introduction

BOUBAT, Edouard

Ode Maritime. Photographs and brief text by Edouard Boubat. Additional text by Bernard George. Heibosha, Japan, 1957. Unpaged text + plates. First edition. Stiff cardboard wrappers in photo-illustrated dust jacket. 32 black-and-white and 8 color plates. Text in French and Japanese.

Boubat's touching look at those who live their lives in harmony with--and at the mercy of--the sea. An incredibly scarce book.

WATANABE, Sumiharu

Face of Washington Square. Photographs by Sumiharu Watanabe. Hasimoto Yuyudo, Tokyo. 1965. 211 pp. Small quarto. First edition. Stiff wrappers in photo-illustrated dust jacket. Original printed belly-band. Printed board slipcase.

One of the few great Japanese photobooks shot in America during in the style of 'Provoke' movement, Watanabe's Face of Washington Square combines the spirit of the 'happenings' movement of the sixties with a photographic sensibility that draws strength from some of the same preoccupations as those seen in the work of William Klein, Helen Levitt, and Robert Frank during this period. The images show the exuberant, almost pulsating diverse humanity at the heart of mid-60's Greenwich Village.

Very rare, even more so with the original slipcase and belly-band.

SHORE, Stephen

Scarce hardbound, 1st edition.

Uncommon Places. Photographs by Stephen Shore. Aperture/ A New Images Book, Millerton, New York, 1982. Unpaged. Oblong quarto. First edition. Clothbound in photo-illustrated dust jacket. 55 color reproductions.

An outstanding book of fifty-five perfectly observed photographs of contemporary America presented in flawless color. Architect Robert Venturi summed up Stephen Shore's talent in the following way: "Shore's is the art of the deadpan - rejecting exotic composition, artful editing, or facile simplification. He accepts the threadbare banality of the American scene, the jerry-rigged, down-at-the-heels seediness of our rural landscapes and the spatial looseness of our towns, recapturing the overfamiliar, making it poignant, coherent, and almost lovable." The photographs were taken on travels from Maine to Florida to Montana between 1973 and 1981. Among the most beautifully printed color monographs. In Fine dust jacket that is just slightly shelf worn.

CARTIER-BRESSON, Henri

CARTIER-BRESSON, Henri. The Europeans: Photographs. New York: Simon and Schuster, (1955). Folio, original red, blue and yellow pictorial paper boards designed by Miró.

First edition in English, with 114 large full-page photogravures and cover designed by Joan Miró.

This collection of photographs focuses on the faces and scenes of Europe as captured by the lens of Cartier-Bresson’s Leica camera. “Cartier-Bresson has a special interest in photographing people and in capturing the essence of what has not previously been seen. He is famous for his theory of the “decisive moment”—that is, seizing the split second when the subject stands revealed in its most significant aspect… Today he ranks as one of the most important and influential photographers of this century” (Blodgett, 96). In The Europeans, he has made “a permanent record of feeling, sun and shadow, the happy and free, the tragic and doomed, the quintessential Europe of our time.” Published the same year as the French first edition. Original caption booklet laid in.

Without scarce acetate dust wrapper Photographs beautiful and fine. Covers bright and unfaded, rear joint and inner hinges with expert repair. An extremely good copy.

AVEDON, Richard

AVEDON, Richard. In the American West 1979-1984. New York: Harry N. Abrams, (1985). Folio, original tan cloth, mounted photographic cover illustrations.

First edition of Avedon’s photobook tribute to contemporary western life, boldly inscribed in the year of publication to Paul Gottlieb, the innovative editor-in-chief of Abrams, “To Paul, with gratitude, Dick Avedon, ’85,” with 113 black-and-white photogravure plates, “amongst the most powerful” of Avedon’s photographs (Parr & Badger II).

In a photobook that reaffirmed “everything Avedon did was transformed and stamped with his own genius,” In the American West emerged from the photographer’s extensive travels across the West, “giving us his personal view of the frontier spirit, which meant puncturing a few myths and constructing some new ones… The haunting portraits in this book are amongst the most powerful that even Avedon has made’ (Parr & Badger II:38). In the American West was commissioned by the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas after its director, Mitchell Wilder, saw Avedon’s photograph of Wilbur Powell, ranch foreman in Montana (the last image in this book). Avedon’s warm inscription is to Paul Gottlieb, the legendary editor-in-chief at Abrams for over two decades, whose innovative leadership made Abrams “the dominant art book publisher in the United States” during his tenure (New York Times). Gottlieb, who died in 2002, was also an executive director of Aperture; this copy from his personal library.

A fine inscribed copy with a memorable association.