Recent Acquisitions
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MARINETTI, F. T.; TATO.
Il Futurismo Rivista Sintetica Illustrata.
Rome: Piazza Adriana, 30,11 Jan. 1931.

Folio (302 x 217 mm), pp.4. Disbound. Slight creasing and a few nicks to edges but generally in excellent condition.

Marinetti's manifesto for Futurist photography, in Issue 22 of Il Futurismo; with reproductions of photographs by Tato and a variety of short texts. Marinetti wrote the manifesto in April 1930 and in September of that year organized the Sala Futurista in the First National Photographic Competition. 'The manifesto stressed the dramatic, other-worldly, immaterial and interior characterization of figures and objects possible through the creative use of photographic techniques'. Among the reproductions is Tato's 'Perfect Bourgeois', a fine example of the technique which he called 'the disguising of objects' ('camuffamento di oggetti')(Lista).

Collection M.+M. Auer, Nice and Geneva 2004, p.407; G. Lista, 'Futurist Photography', Art Journal, 41.4 (1981), pp. 358-364.

Price: £750

Catalogue Number: SF96208

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ABBOTT, Berenice.
Changing New York.
New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1939.

4to (285 x 219 mm), pp.xiv, 15-208. Frontispiece and 96 black-and-white photographs, introduction by Audrey McMahon, text by Elizabeth McCausland, design by S. A. Jacobs. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt, upper side lettered and with device in gilt, top edge dyed blue; light soiling to pastedowns, ink mark and short closed tear to page 17. Original black-and-white photo-illustrated dust-jacket; lightly worn at extremities and around spine, crease, chip, and closed tear to head of spine. Near-fine in a very good dust-jacket.

First edition, first issue. After spending close to 10 years in Paris, during which she assisted Man Ray, befriended Atget and established a successful portrait studio, Abbott returned to the United States in 1929 to find herself in a changed and rapidly changing New York. Influenced by the work of Atget, whose archive she had purchased after his death, she began photographing the city, documenting the rapid transition from old to new. In 1935 she successfully applied for funding from the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. In the application she wrote of her intention to capture 'the spirit of the metropolis… its hurrying tempo, its congested streets, the past jostling the present… a synthesis which shows the skyscraper in relation to the less colossal edifices which preceded it… It is important that they should be photographed today, not tomorrow; for tomorrow may see many of these exciting and important mementos of eighteenth and nineteenth-century New York swept away to make room for new colossi. Already many an amazing and incredible building which was, or could have been, photographed five years ago has disappeared.'

Sinibaldi, A. Regards sur un siècle de photographie à travers le livre, (73); Roth, A., The Book of 101 Books, pp.100-1; Parr, M. and Badger, G., The Photobook: A History Vol.I, p.141; Roth, A. et al. Open Book, pp.130-1; Auer, M. and M., 802 photo books, p.276.

Price: £2,500

Catalogue Number: SF96432

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[ATGET, Eugene].
Le Crapouillot publie un numéro special sur Paris avec l'album de Photographies d'Atget.
Paris, May 1929.

Folio (319 x 243 mm), pp.80. 60 black-and-white illustrations (30 of which are reproductions of Atget's photographs). Original cream wrappers printed in black and red, reproduction of one of Atget's photographs affıxed to upper side. Original glassine; lightly toned. Four adverts printed on colour paper bound in; crease to tip on upper and lower side. Near-fine.

Le Crapouillot was a satirical magazine founded in 1915 by Jean Galtier-Boissière who distributed copies of the first issue to fellow soldiers in the trenches. The name, which translates as 'little toad', derives from trench slang for a mortar round. This special issue on Paris features contributions from Pierre Mac Orlan, André Salmon and Paul Reboux; each of whom writes on a particular arrondissement. These written sketches are illustrated primarily by Atget's photographs, as well as with reproductions of artworks.

Price: £375

Catalogue Number: SF96135

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FRANK, Robert.
Les Américains.
Paris: Delpire, 1958.

8vo (207 x 184 mm), pp.174. 83 black-and-white photographs printed in gravure, texts edited by Alain Bosquet. Original laminated pictorial boards illustrated by Saul Steinberg, printed in light blue, red and black; very light toning, one gathering protruding slightly. No dust-jacket as issued. Frank's signature in black ink to half-title and title-page. Near-fine.

First edition, signed copy. In his successful application for a Guggenheim grant, Frank wrote: 'The project I have in mind is one that will shape itself as it proceeds… The material is there; the practice will be in the photographer's hand, the vision in his mind.' Between April 1955 and June 1956 he set out on a series of trips across America. His aim was to complete a body of work that would be 'a broad, voluminous picture record of things American, past and present… A visual study of a civilisation'. Les Américains follows a careful and complex sequence, with four chapters each introduced by a photograph of the American flag. In this first edition the photographs are accompanied by a series of quotations and anecdotes selected by Alain Bosquet. Many of these are written by Americans such as Erskine Caldwell, Henry Miller, Walt Whitman, and William Faulkner. These quotes on how they view their country are presented under titles such as Isolationism, An Incorrigible Idealism, Uniformity, and The Almighty Dollar. 'Like Frank's photographs, they are presented as a self-indictment, and therefore indisputable' (Cook).

Cook, J., 'Robert Frank's America', Afterimage, March 1982, pp.9-14; Sinibaldi, A. Regards sur un siècle de photographie à travers le livre, (120); Parr, M. and Badger, G., The Photobook: A History Vol.I, p.247; Roth, A. et al. Open Book, pp.172-3; Auer, M. and M., 802 photo books, p.375.

Price: £10,000

Catalogue Number: SF96427

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