Sweet Life (German book club edition) [FINE]

First German (book club) edition, first and only printing, hardcover. Illustrated throughout in black-and-white, black-and-white pictorial endpapers, black embossed boards with illustrated dust jacket with red type in protective plastic wrapper. 208 pages, 153 images, 11.5 x 11.5 inches. Text and design by Ed van der Elsken. … Embarking on a fourteen-month world tour [was an] ambitious challenge [undertaken] in 1959 by the Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken and his wife Gerda. The resulting photographs would turn into one of the most epic Dutch photobooks ever produced, Sweet Life … Their travels would cover West Africa, the Malay Peninsula, the Philippines, Japan, Hong Kong, the United States and Mexico. Van der Elsken found his stride photographing in the streets of each major city or backwater … Today, for historians and those lucky enough to see a copy firsthand, Sweet Life is admired and celebrated for its cinematic energy, raw style, and gritty in-your-face design reminiscent of another masterpiece, William Klein s Life is Good & Good for You in New York. What Klein s New York and Robert Frank s The Americans did for the genre of personal documentary of one country, van der Elsken s ambitions took on the world. Jeffrey Ladd for Time Magazine Two German editions were published in 1966 with the same content and layout. This version was published for a book club and is the same as the other German edition (Publisher: Dumont), but with a different dust jacket. Worldwide there were 7 different language editions published of Sweet Life; all with identical content and layout, but different languages and covers. Martin Parr, The Photobook: A History, Vol 1, pp. 254-255; Frits Gierstberg & Rik Suermondt, The Dutch Photobook, pp. 120-121. [Oversized, heavy book. Please keep this in mind when placing your order.] USA customers please NOTE: We ship our books only via USPS Media Mail (with insurance & tracking). International (ie, non-USA) customers please NOTE: The standard shipping cost quoted by Biblio is often much less than the actual shipping cost (with insurance & tracking). When you place your order, Ipy Books will first notify you as to the actual shipping cost; you can then determine whether you want to pay for your order.