L'Amour Fou: Photography and Surrealism

New York: Abbeville Press, 1985. Hardcover. VG/Good+ (light wear to boards. light bumping, creasing & rubbing to corners. fold-out plate of pg 145 has creasing & rough, lower edge w/ creasing to fold-out edge. dustjacket highly scuffed & scratched w/ scored area to front; rough wear to lower edge; back cover has small, narrow white ID w/ a blue mark). Maroon stamped cloth, black & illus. dust jacket, 243 pp., 236 bw plates. A remains a nice, bright copy. With an essay by Dawn Ades. A very important analysis of the French Surrealists' innovative and paradoxical use of photography. "What this book stunningly and conclusively demonstrates is that surrealism was acutely focused on the relationship between photography and imagination. Therefore, to explore surrealist photography is also to open onto an exciting consideration of photography's implications for modern consciousness itself, a consciousness shaped in large measure by many of the artist-photographers represented in this book. Erotic, disquieting, disorienting, humorous, and, above all, exquisite photographs -- many never before published -- by Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst, Andre Breton, Brassai, Salvador Dali, Andre Kertesz, Jacques-Andre Boiffard, Lee Miller, and Hans Bellmer are all here." (dj).