For more than four decades, Bruce Weber has been one of the most influential photographers in the world.  He is widely known for his ad campaigns for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Versace, as well as his work for Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, Elle, Life, Interview, and Rolling Stone magazines.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY BRUCE WEBER on the title page “To Jim – Bruce Weber”. Navy blue cloth with artists initials blindstamped on front board. First printing, limited to 5000 copies. Designed by John Eric Cheim. Beautifully illustrated with over 50 full-page photogravure plates of male models and actors, a few tinted with halftone colors. Sections include: Brothers, Matt Dillon, Notebook, Lifeguards, Clammers, Hall of Fame, Jeff, On Leave in Waikiki. Some soiling and chipping to dust jacket that shows several small closed tears. Boards and interior clean, with binding tight.

Bookseller Inventory # 24473

$650

Bruce Weber
Weber, Bruce

Publisher: Twelvetrees Press
Publication Date: 1983
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Signed: Inscribed by Photographer
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Featured Items, Photography, Signed & Inscribed ·

James Baldwin was a leading advocate for the rights of African Americans. As the 1960s began, and violence in the South increased, Baldwin grew increasingly angry. He responded with powerful books and essays, in part meant to educate white Americans on what it meant to be black. It also offered white readers a view of themselves through the eyes of the African-American community. Through his work, Baldwin offered a brutally realistic picture of race relations, but he always remained hopeful about improvement. Nothing Personal began as a collaboration with Richard Avedon, intended as a eulogy for the slain civil rights activist Medger Evers. Published a year after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, it highlights the civil rights movement, and illustrates in sharp contrast the wide spectrum of social views of the 1960′s. Avedon juxtaposes an American Nazi Party salute with a naked Allen Ginsberg, a segregationist George Wallace, and a man born into slavery, William Cansby. Nothing Personal remains an important portrait of a time of great internal strife, and a testament to those who stood up and demanded change.

“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.”

- James Baldwin, Nothing Personal

Description: Hard bound, no dust jacket. Missing original publishers slipcase. Bound with white paper over boards with silver title panel front and back and black lettering to panel and to spine. Boards are rubbed and lightly soiled. Spine edges bumped, and showing small tears. Interior clean and binding tight. A good working copy of copy of Avedon’s notoriously fragile second book.

Bookseller Inventory# 25401

SOLD

Nothing Personal
Baldwin, James; Avedon, Richard

Publisher: Antheneum
Publication Date: 1964
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

This is the single best reference for the modern photography book collector. In 2001 at the beginning of the photo book craze Andrew Roth put together his list of the 101 most influential photography books of the last century. Beautifully designed and profusely illustrated, with essays by curators, critics, and other academics, it still stands as an invaluable reference and is an essential purchase for any serious photography book collection.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. 305 pages. Gray cloth boards. Profusely illustrated with b/w & color photos. First trade edition with some wear to corners to dust jacket, otherwise very good. very scarce!

Bookseller Inventory # 18378

SOLD

The Book of 101 Books:
Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century
Roth, Andrew

Publisher: Roth Horowitz
Publication Date: 2001
Binding: Hardbound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

The Baron Von Ketteler was the German Ambassador to China in the late 1800′s, his murder set off the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. On on the 20th of June the conservative faction of the Imperial Court induced the Empress Dowager to declare war on the foreign powers in Beijing. Diplomats, foreign civilians, soldiers and some Chinese Christians retreated to the Legation Quarter where they held out for fifty-five days until the Eight-Nation Alliance brought 20,000 troops to their rescue. The Ketteler Monument was erected in everlasting commemoration of his name, and as an eternal token of the Emperor’s wrath, and as a warning to all!

Description: Original leather binding with gilt titles, raised bands & lovely marbled endpapers. Gold hand tooling to spine edge. Fold out engraved print pasted in. Text in French. An anecdotal overview of China, Japan, Siam, Tonkin, Burma, and Laos by the French author Jean Castillon (1718-1799). BOOKPLATE FROM THE BARONESS MAUD “MATILDA” VON KETTELER affixed to front fixed end page. Hinges tender but holding, wear to edges of boards with some loss of leather. Interior shows some minor foxing, otherwise very good.

Bookseller Inventory # 25400

$450

Anecdotes Chinoises
Castillon, Jean

Publisher: Chez Vincent, Paris
Publication Date: 1774
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket, As Issued
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Antiquarian & Leather Bound ·

With the Bauhaus in Dessau, Walter Gropius created one of the most influential architecture and design schools of the 20th century. During the few years of its use as a school, until it was closed down by the Nazis in 1932, it had also become a center for the creative forces of its time. Born and educated in Germany, Walter Gropius worked under the German architect Peter Behrens from 1907 untill 1910, his fellow employees at this time included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. As the founding director of the Bauhaus, Gropius made inestimable contributions to his field, to the point that knowing his work is crucial to understanding Modernism. The Bauhaus revolutionized art training by combining the teaching of the pure arts with the study of crafts. Gropius aimed to unite art with technology, and he educated a new generation of designers and architects to reject historical precedents and adopt the ideology of modern industry. For the Bauhaus, Gropius wrote the curriculum, designed the building, and he assembled its faculty: an extraordinary group that included Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer.

Description: Hard bound first printing bound in yellow cloth with red lettering. No dust jacket. Text in German. 221 pages, profusely illustrated. #12 in the series -bauhausbucher. Very progressive architecture for the time, showing the most early ideas of modernism in architecture. The most sought after title in the series. Some wear and minor soiling to cloth boards. Interior clean and binding tight. RARE hardbound copy!.

Bookseller Inventory # 16908

SOLD

Walter Gropius : Bauhaus Bauten Dessau
Gropius, Walter

Publisher: Albert Langen Verlag
Publication Date: 1930
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition:Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Chuck Close is one of the most important contemporary artists in America. His drawings, paintings, photographs and prints have been the focus of more than one hundred and forty solo exhibitions in over twenty countries. Chuck Close first made a name for himself for his skillful brushwork, and his very large portraits based on photographs of family and friends. In 1988 Close suffered a seizure which left him paralyzed, and has relied on a wheelchair since. Termed “The Event” it became a major turning point in his career as a painter. Close continued to paint with a brush strapped onto his wrist, creating large portraits in low-resolution grid squares. Viewed from afar, these squares appear as a single, unified image although in pixelated form.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. CHUCK CLOSE SIGNED BOOKPLATE affixed to front free endpage! Massive – Revised edition. 352 pages. Profusely illustrated with full color plates. Includes an exhibition checklist, bibliography,and index. A beautiful copy with no visible wear, and a scarce signed copy!

Bookseller Inventory # 23528

$225

Chuck Close: Work
Finch, Christopher

Publisher: Prestel
Publication Date: 2010
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Signed: Signed by Artist

· Category: Art, Featured Items ·

Karel Appel was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. He was one of the founders of the avant-garde movement Cobra in 1948. Their working method was based on spontaneity and experiment, and  drew inspiration from children’s drawings, primitive art forms, and the work of Paul Klee and Joan Miró. Cobra was a milestone in the development of European abstract expressionism.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Blue-grey cloth over boards with lettering in blind on upper board and spine. A lavishly illustrated volume. Covers Appel’s childhood, his work as a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam (here presented for the first time), his revolutionary works from his time with the COBRA group, and his informal paintings during the ‘Art Autre’ years. Complete with documentary references, including excerpts from manifestoes, art reviews, and artists’ letters, as well as some of Appel’s poetry, this volume presents a comprehensive account of the artist’s life during the war and postwar years. A few small closed tears to dust jacket, otherwise very good.

Bookseller Inventory # 25277

SOLD

Karel Appel The Early Years 1937-1957
Ragon, Michel

Publisher: Galilee
Publication Date: 1988
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Ukiyoe Kuzushi (The folating world in disorder) is a series of photographs taken by one of Japan’s leading photographers in an attempt to reproduce the atmosphere of the lost culture of the Japanese Courtasen, and the Yoshiwara red light district of Edo era Japan. Saburuko, (ones who serve) are often referenced  in Murasaki Shikibu’s famous novel The Tale of Genji. It was this atmosphere and culture within the Yoshiwara district that spawned the highly popular ukiyo-e prints of the various inhabitants of the “floating world”.

Bookseller Inventory # 16074

$500

Ukiyoe Kuzushi
Hoshino, Komaro and Fujimoto, Giichi

Publisher: Nippon Geijutsu Shuppansha
Publication Date: 1981
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Fashion, Featured Items, Photography, Signed & Inscribed ·

Dorothea Tanning in the most important living surrealist painter, as well as an accomplished sculptor, designer and poet. Tanning moved to New York in the early 1930s where she discovered Dada and Surrealism. By the early 1940s Tanning was working on her own surreal paintings while supporting herself as a commercial artist. in 1942 she met Max Ernst, they played chess, fell in love, and were later married in a double wedding along with Man Ray and Juliet Browner.  She has developed her own individual style over the course of a career that spans seven decades. On August 25, 2010, she celebrated her 100th birthday.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket, in publishers slipcase as issued. An exhaustive monograph with hundreds of plates, many in color, with contributions in prose and poetry by John Cage, James Merrill, with an Afterword by Tanning. Chronology, Bibliography, and Index of plates. This is a great monograph on the artist!

Bookseller Inventory# 25309

SOLD

Dorothea Tanning
Tanning, Dorothea; Bailly, Jean Christophe; Morgan, Robert C.

Publisher: George Braziller, N. Y.
Publication Date: 1995
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Edition:    1st Ed.

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Joan Mitchell (1926-1992) was one of the few women artists accepted among the Abstract Expressionists. She expanded upon the visual language of New York artists including her mentor Willem de Kooning. She outpaced all but a handful of her male mentors and counterparts. Although well regarded by critics, fellow artists, and the general public, Mitchell’s achievement has never received full recognition. In 1955, Mitchell moved to France to join Canadian painter Jean-Paul Riopelle, where she continued to paint until her death in 1992. John Ashbery called her ” …a tough lady, a hard drinker, hard on her friends and harder on herself”.

Description: Paperback copy published on the occasion of the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Nantes exhibition “Joan Mitchell, works from 1951 – to 1982″ June 24 to September 26, 1994 & the Paris, Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume exhibition “Joan Mitchell, the last years (1983-1992)” June 22 to September 11, 1994. Some minor wear to wrappers, otherwise very good. Text in French. 143 pages. Illustrated in full color. Some minor wear to wrappers, and sunning to spine edge, otherwise very good. Interior clean, and binding strong. SCARCE!

Bookseller Inventory # 23710
SOLD

Joan Mitchell
Mitchell, Joan; Storr, Robert; Michaud, Yves

Publisher: Musee des Beaux Arts de Nantes / Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume
Publication Date: 1994
Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: Good

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Ansel Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist. He is best known for his timeless and visually stunning photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park. Adams founded the Group f/64 along with fellow photographers Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham, which in turn created the Museum of Modern Art’s department of photography. His lasting legacy includes helping to elevate photography to an art comparable with painting and music, and equally capable of expressing emotion and beauty. As he reminded his students, “It is easy to take a photograph, but it is harder to make a masterpiece in photography than in any other art medium.”

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Stated first printing. SIGNED BY ANSEL ADAMS on the dedication page in black pen. 109 stunning black and white plates reproduced by extended range photolithography, closely supervised by Adams. Selected Photographs Made from 1928 to 1968 in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Utah. Mesa Verde, Death Valley, Joshua Tree, Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, etc. Statement by the Photographer and An Essay on The Land by Lawrence Clark Powell. Some wear to corners and edges. Minor foxing to half title page, otherwise very good.

Bookseller Inventory # 24206

SOLD

Photographs of the Southwest
Adams, Ansel; Powell, Lawrence Clark

Publisher: New York Graphic Society
Publication Date: 1976
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Signed: Signed by Photographer
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Ernest Hemingway was the most influential writer of the last century. An American author and journalist, his distinctive style was characterized by economy and understatement. The Old Man and the Sea was the final work published during Hemingway’s lifetime, and won for him the Nobel Prize.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. First printing of the First edition. Meets all points of issue. Scribner’s “A” on copyright page, no mention of Book of the Month edition or Pulitzer Prize. Original $3.00 price in inside flap of dust jacket, and brown tinted author photo to rear of dust jacket. Sea blue cloth boards show minor wear to corners and edges. Slight offsetting from dust jacket to endpages. Minor foxing to insidr flaps of jacket. Previous owners name and 1952 date to front fixed endpage, otherwise a tight and clean copy. Dust jacket shows some wear to edges and corners, and one small chip to upper spine edge, otherwise fine. An increasingly scarce copy of a seminal work of modern fiction.

Bookseller Inventory # 24397
SOLD

The Old Man and the Sea
Hemingway, Ernest

Publisher: Scribner’s
Publication Date: 1952
Binding: Hardcover
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Count Hubert de Givenchy is a French aristocrat and fashion designer, and arguably one of the most successful couturiers of all time. He found his start with Balenciaga, and later as a assistant designer to Schiaparelli and in 1952 founded The House of Givenchy at the age of 24. Givenchy is  the original couturier to the stars of Hollywood, designing much of the personal and professional wardrobe of Audrey Hepburn.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. SIGNED BY HUBERT DE GIVENCHY on the half title page! 208 pages. Profusely illustrated in full color. The house of Givenchy was founded in 1952 by designer Hubert de Givenchy. His style was marked by innovativeness, contrary to the more conservative designs by Dior. Audrey Hepburn, later the most prominent proponent of Givenchy’s fashion. Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, The Duchess of Windsor, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis were other famous customers of Givenchy’s. Boldly signed on the half title page. A very nice copy, bright and clean.

Bookseller Inventory # 23040

SOLD

The Givenchy Style
Mohrt, Francoise

Publisher: Vendome Press
Publication Date: 1998
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First U. S. Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Aldo Sessa is undoubtedly the most recognized photographer in Argentina. Born in Buenos Aires in 1939, he started his long career of creative work drawing and painting at the “De Ridder” Atelier at the age of 10. He later specialized in graphic arts, design, and photography. His works are included in private collections and in museums in Argentina and around the world. He has performed more than 250 exhibitions and published 40 art books.

Description: Hard bound in dust jacket. SIGNED IN BLACK PEN BY ALDO SESSA on the titlepage. 47 beautifully haunting and surreal full page photographs. A scarce signed copy!

Bookseller Inventory # 19217

$200 

· Category: Featured Items, Photography ·

Metzker has quietly been making extraordinary photographs for the better part of six decades. Metzker’s photographs strike a unique balance between formal brilliance, optical innovation, and a deep regard for the world. Today, he is recognized as one of the great masters of American photography. His images question the nature of  photographic “reality” through his use of formal inventions such as photomontage, solarisation, multiple exposures and unique perspectives. Approaching 80 years of age, Ray Metzker remains  one of the most dedicated, innovative, and influential American photographers of the last half century.

Description: Hard bound first printing with dust jacket. Design by Vignelli. INSCRIBED BY METZKER TO THE PHOTO-MONTAGE ARTIST VAL TELBERG. Small season’s greetings card signed by Metzker laid in. Published on the occasion of the 1985/86 touring exhibition in association with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Essay by Anne Wilkes Tucker. 143 pages profusely illustrated. Some minor wear to dust jacket, otherwise very good. A nice photographic association copy, scarce!.

Bookseller Inventory # 17645
SOLD

Unknown Territory
Metzker, Ray K.

Publisher:    Aperture
Publication Date:    1984
Binding:    Hardcover
Book Condition:    Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition:    Very Good
Signed:    inscribed by Photographer
Edition:    First Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·