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Archive for September, 2009

Emmet Gowin sought his subject matter from within his own life. Following his marriage to Edith Morris in 1964 Gowin began taking memorable portraits of his wife and extended family in Virginia. After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, Gowin studied under influential American photographers Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Gowin now teaches at Princeton.

emmet-gowinDescription: Hard bound with dust jacket. SIGNED BY EMMET GOWIN on the front free endpage. Essay by Emmet Gowin. Some minor wear to dust jacket corners and edges, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight.

Bookseller Inventory # 21156

SOLD

Emmet Gowin: Photographs
Gowin, Emmet

Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: 1976
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

Max Ernst, Défais ton sac, mon brave (from: La femme 100 têtes)

La femme 100 têtes was the first of 3 collage novels designed by Max Ernst. Nine chapters ‘tell’ the story of a woman. Each page contains a single print with a brief subtitle (the legend), so the reader must follow the trail of the illustrations that tell the story. The combinations of scientific instruments and floating figures and  landscapes with unexpected interiors define the dream world identified so closely with surrealism.

The elements he [Max Ernst] borrows are, above all, elements that have been drawn, and it is the drawing that is most frequently replaced by collage. Here collage becomes a poetic process, perfectly opposable in its aims to the collage of the Cubists, which is primarily realistic in intention. Max Ernst borrows his elements principally from printed drawings, drawings for advertisements, dictionary illustrations, popular images, newspaper photographs. He blends them so skilfully into his pictures that sometimes one hardly suspects their presence… – Louis Aragon, from Max Ernst, peintre des illusions (1923).

Description: (Hundred Headless Woman) First printing of the second edition. #45 in a limited & hand numbered printing of 1000 copies. Paperback copy, stiff wraps with “Review copy” slip laid in. Published in association with George Wittemborn, N.Y. Minor wear to corners and edges, otherwise very good. RARE!

p1060319SOLD

La femme 100 têtes Avis au lecteur par André Breton
Ernst, Max

Publisher: Editions De L’oeil, Paris
Publication Date: 1956
Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Thus

callahan2Harry Callahan was appointed by László Moholy-Nagy to teach photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago. There he was well known to encourage his students to turn their cameras on their lives, and he led by example. Callahan’s work was defined by deeply personal response to his own life. He draws us ever more insistently inward toward his own private sensibility. He photographed his wife and daughter, the streets and buildings of cities where he lived, showing a strong sense of line and form, and light and darkness. He also worked with multiple exposures. He photographed everywhere – at home, in the streets, in the landscape; alone, with their daughter, with Eleanor, in black and white and in color, distant and close. He tried several technical experiments – double and triple exposure, blurs, large and small format film. Callahan retired in 1977, at which time he was teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design. When he died in 1999 he left behind 100,000 negatives and over 10,000 proof prints.

Description: SIGNED BY HARRY CALLAHAN on the half title page. Hard bound first printing with dust jacket. Published on the occasion of the major retrospective exhibition held by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Some minor wear to edges of jacket, othwrwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight.

Bookseller Inventory # 18737

callahan11
SOLD

Callahan
Callahan, Harry

ISBN: 0912334754
Publisher: Aperture, New York
Publication Date: 1976
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Signed: Signed by Photographer
Edition: First Edition

Academy Award Nominated actor Terrence Stamp was discovered when he was cast in Peter Ustinov’s 1962 film adaptation of Melville’s classic bily budd. Like his friends Peter Cook and Michael Cane, Stamp has made a lasting impression on American audiences. For almost fifty years he has continually been cast in Hollywood films like Superman, Wall Street, The Limey, Star Wars-Phantom Menace, and most recently Get Smart.

In 1983 Anthony Price’s most popular character David Audley, the historian turned spy, was brought to life by Terrence Stamp in the British television series entitled Chessgame. In appreciation, Anthony Price sent Terence stamp this inscribed presentation copy along with a hand signed letter.

Description: INSCRIBED by Anthony Price to the well known actor Terence Stamp “Terence Stamp ( alias David Audley ) with best wishes from Anthony Price”. HAND SIGNED LETTER from Anthony Price to Terence Stamp discussing his role as Intelligence Chief David Audley. Some minor wear to dust jacket edges, otherwise very good. A Rare association copy!.

Bookseller Inventory # 16245

SOLD

Soldier No More
by Price, Anthony

Publisher: Crime Clubby
Publication Date: 1982
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Signed: Inscribed by Author
Edition: First U. S. Edition

Aaron Siskind was an American abstract expressionist photographer. Siskind’s work focuses on the details of nature and architecture. He presents them as flat surfaces to create a new image out of them, which, he claimed, stands independent of the original subject. In the early 1940s, his work shifted to the abstract and metaphoric as Siskind cultivated friendships with such Abstract Expressionists as Franz Kline, Barrett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, and Mark Rothko. In 1950 Siskind met Harry Callahan when both were teaching at Black Mountain College in the summer. Later, Callahan persuaded Siskind to join him as part of the faculty of the IIT Institute of Design in Chicago (founded by Lazlo Moholy-Nagy as the New Bauhaus). During the 1950s, Siskind’s primary subjects were urban facades, graffiti, isolated figures, and the stone walls of Martha’s Vineyard. In 1971 he followed Callahan (who had left in 1961) to teach for the rest of his life at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Description: FIRST PRINTING OF SISKIND’S FIRST BOOK. Hard bound with dust jacket. Very minor wear to edges and corners of cloth boards with no wear to the silver lettering on the front board. Dust jacket shows only the most minor wear to edges and corners, otherwise fine (now in Brodart cover) RARE IN JACKET!.

Bookseller Inventory# 21129
977683266

SOLD

Aaron Siskind Photographs
Siskind, Aaron

Publisher: Horizon Press
Publication Date: 1959
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

What is most memorable about the austere, white-walled villas that he built after World War I in and around Paris is their cool beauty and their airy sense of space.
-Witold Rybczynski

Le Corbusier was a visionary. He believed that architecture had lost its way. Art Nouveau, all curves and sinuous decorations, had burned itself out in a brilliant burst of exuberance; the seductive Art Deco style promised to do the same. The Arts and Crafts movement had adherents all over Europe, but as the name implies, it was hardly representative of an industrial age. Le Corbusier maintained that this new age deserved a brand-new architecture. It was to become known as the International Style : raise the building on stilts, mix in a free-flowing floor plan, make the walls independent of the structure, add horizontal strip windows and top it off with a roof garden.

In 1907, he traveled to Paris, where he found work in the office of Auguste Perret, the French pioneer of Reinforced concrete. Between October 1910 and March 1911, he worked near Berlin for the renowned architect Peter Behrens where he met Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. He was a pioneer in studies of modern high design and was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities. His career spanned 8 decades, with his buildings constructed throughout central Europe, India, Russia, and one each in North and South America. He was also an “Urban planner, painter, sculptor, writer, modern furniture designer.

Description: Hard bound first printing with dust jacket. A very nice copy, bright and clean.

Bookseller Inventory # 13600

SOLD

The Villas of Le Corbusier, 1920-1930: With Photographs in the Lucien Herve Collection
Benton, Tim

Publisher: Yale
Publication Date: 1987
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

JOHN IRVING

Description: Hard bound first printing SIGNED BY JOHN IRVING on the title page. Minor wear to corners and edges of dust jacket, otherwise very good.

Bookseller Inventory # 17250

SOLD

The Cider House Rules
Irving, John

jirving111111

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Publication Date: 1985
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition:Very Good
Edition: First Edition

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