LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN by Agee, James, and Walker Evans - 1941

London: Akfred W. Bennett, 1866. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. Good/No Jacket. Ernest Edwards. FIRST EDITION 1866. Original blue pebbled cloth, AEG, gilt lettering front cover & spine, gilt decoration of box camera and ice-axe on front cover, gilt title frame front, gilt rules spine ends, debossed triple borders front & rear covers. Diffuse grubbiness covers, rubbed spine ends and corners, no owner writing or marks on any pages, solid binding, paper cracked inside hinges but hinges strong and not broken (mess is solid and tight), some foxing in places but considerably less than what is frequently found for this book. The book measures 275mm tall x 215mm, and has 243 pages, 28 b/w photos, map. This is probably the earliest mountaineering book to use photographs as illustrations. Account of the author's excursion to Bernese Oberland with the purpose of photographing the mountains and the climbing. The group was comprised of 5 men and 4 women, plus the famous guide Christian Almer,… Read More

Westminster London: Archibald Constable and Co, 1900. First Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. Very Good/No Jacket. vittorio sella. FIRST PRINTING of First UK Edition. Rebound in green cloth to resemble the original binding with original front cover title patch cleanly mounted in original position on front cover and original spine patches similarly mounted. Overall nice condition. Tight binding with no loose pages (the text block has been sewn into page gatherings = the stitching shows at the start/end of each gathering --> see photo). Gift inscription on front pastedown. No other former owner writing or marks in book. Based on the inscription, this book was given to Smoke Blanchard prior to his 1964 expedition to Mt St Elias, possibly by Vin Hoeman, beloved climber & mountaineering historian who perished in an avalanche on the 1969 Dhaulagiri expedition along with 6 others, though the "Love Always" seems a bit melodramatic. Smoke Blanchard's St Elias expedition was a 4-man… Read More

Yosemite National Park / Boston: Virginia Adams / Houghton Mifflin, 1950. First printing. Hardcover. Very good/good +. Folio. Black card stock covers, with white lettering and EW decoration on front cover. White comb spiral binding. 79 pages, with 30 full page b/w photographic plates and excerpts from Weston's daybooks. Wear to all four corners, and scrapes at top of rear cover. Small repair to top of comb binding. Small ghost of sticker removal at top corner of Front FEP. No names or marks. Illustrated dust-jacket (with "$10.00" price intact) is in one piece, but has loss at both spine ends, at middle of spine, and at bottom corner of both panels at spine. The dust-jacket also has a horizontal crease across middle (where it was folded and tucked inside book). Due to size, international shipping at cost.

Venice: Linea d'acqua, 2010. Limited edition Facsimile. Hardcover. very good. Linea d'acqua, Venezia, 2010. No. 213 of a limited edition of 250. size 20 x 14 x 2.5 inches, weight 20lb. Fernando Ongania published TWO large format volumes of brilliant photos of Venice. This facsimile combines all 185 photos of both volumes (read more below) --- Introduction Italian, 20pp, 185 plates. Includes a laid-in index of all 185 plates with the names of the buildings/locations and a brief description (in Italian) The condition.of the book and the plates is very good. The white cover has some spots and smudging. No slipcase. Ships from Hawaii with free Priority Mail upgrade within the US (a $75-$100 value!). Fernando Ongania published TWO large format volumes of brilliant photos of Venice. The first in 1891 titled 'Calli e Canali in Venezia" (with 100 photographic plates) and in 1895 'Calli e canali e isole della laguna' ((with 85 photographic plates of Venice and the islands in the lagoon. There are also 15… Read More

Austin: University of Texas, 1968. First printing. Hardcover. Fine/very good +. Sm 4to. Green cloth, with silver and black spine lettering and silver decoration. Pale green end papers. 264 pages, with Navaho Pronunciation Guide, Appendices, Bibliography, and Index. Illustrated with b/w and some color photographs. SIGNED by Gilpin on the half title page. No other names. No remainder marks, or marks to text. Illustrated dust-jacket (with price clipped) has slight wear at spine ends, else Fine. A Fine, tight, signed copy, in dust-jacket, of Gilpin's stunning work.

Göttingen: Steidl, 2016. A fine copy. Oblong folio (36 x 29 cm) 31 color photographs. Cloth; slipcase. Additional photograph in cloth chemise. DELUXE LIMITED EDITION, number 25 of 50 copies signed by Burtynsky with an original photograph, from an edition of 150 (three sets of 50 copies, each with one of three images) plus 15 artist's proofs. The additional image is that found of p. 4 of the book. "The images in this book are not about the battles being fought on the ground. Rather, they examine this ancient method of providing one of the most basic elements of our diet; as primitive industry and as abstract two-dimensional human marks upon the landscape." - Edward Burtynsky. For this series, the photographer traveled to Gujarat, India, to make images of the Little Ranch of Kutch, a region that is home to more than 100,000 salt workers extracting around one million tons of salt from the floodwaters of the Arabian Sea each year. "Salt has been their main industry for the last four hundred years.… Read More

Yosemite National Park / Boston: Virginia Adams / Houghton Mifflin, 1950. First printing. Hardcover. Very good/good +. Folio. Black card stock covers, with white lettering and EW decoration on front cover. White comb spiral binding. 79 pages, with 30 full page b/w photographic plates and excerpts from Weston's daybooks. Wear to all four corners, and scrapes at top of rear cover. Small repair to top of comb binding. Small ghost of sticker removal at top corner of Front FEP. No names or marks. Illustrated dust-jacket (with "$10.00" price intact) is in one piece, but has loss at both spine ends, at middle of spine, and at bottom corner of both panels at spine. The dust-jacket also has a horizontal crease across middle (where it was folded and tucked inside book). Due to size, international shipping at cost.

Portland, OR: Northwest Photography Archive & Oregon State University Press, 2008. First printing. 345 pp., 12 x 12.5 inches. Cloth over boards in printed dust-jacket. With 134 full-page reproductions, and an introduction, epilogue, list of plates, notes, acknowledgments, selected bibliography, and index. From the first printing of five thousand copies, designed and produced by John Laursen, this is one of one hundred special copies, numbered and signed by Laursen, housed in a special slipcase, and accompanied by an archival digital pigment print of an 1867 Carleton Watkins photograph, "Cape Horn." A gorgeous production. As new. The Northwest Photography Archive was the culmination of many years of research, field work, collecting, planning, and organization — not to mention fundraising! — by Terry Toedtemeier and John Laursen. Wild Beauty, the first publication of the Archive, appeared in tandem with a celebrated exhibition of the same name at the Portland Art Museum, where Toedtemeier, a… Read More

Commentaires and Commentaires 2 assemble Chris Marker's early film commentaries in written form. Together they comprise nine commentaries from Les statues meurent aussi (1953), to Si j'avais quatre dromadaires (1966). When the first Commentaires was published in 1961, two of Marker's films included in the book had been censored and were not allowed to be shown in French cinemas: Les statues meurent aussi, because of its critical stance towards the damaging cultural impact of colonialism, and Cuba Si! (1961) because of its sympathy for Castro and the revolution.
A real pleasure are the commentaries L'Amérique rêve (1959) in Commentaires and Soy Mexico (1965) in Commentaires 2, which Chris Marker called his imaginary films. Both exist only in these books and are accompanied by fantastic images.
The dynamic layout, set by Chris Marker and Juliette Caputo, treats images and text as equally important. According to Rick Poynor, Commentaires are not only of interest in terms of film history, but also… Read More

Austin: University of Texas, 1968. First printing. Hardcover. Fine/very good +. Sm 4to. Green cloth, with silver and black spine lettering and silver decoration. Pale green end papers. 264 pages, with Navaho Pronunciation Guide, Appendices, Bibliography, and Index. Illustrated with b/w and some color photographs. SIGNED by Gilpin on the half title page. No other names. No remainder marks, or marks to text. Illustrated dust-jacket (with price clipped) has slight wear at spine ends, else Fine. A Fine, tight, signed copy, in dust-jacket, of Gilpin's stunning work.