“HISTORY STALKS THE LANDSCAPE AT EVERY TURN”: EXTREMELY RARE DELUXE TWO-VOLUME EDITION OF FRIEDLANDER’S AMERICAN MONUMENT, ONE OF ONLY 50 COPIES, WITH 218 HALFTONES AND TEN ORIGINAL GELATIN SILVER PRINTS, EACH SIGNED AND NUMBERED BY LEE FRIEDLANDER

FRIEDLANDER, Lee. The American Monument. Two volumes. WITH: Fourteen American Monuments. New York: Eakins, 1976-77. American Monument: Volume I with 218 halftones printed on heavy cream stock; Volume II with ten original gelatin silver prints, each measuring 8 by 10 inches, matted with heavy white card stock measuring 11-1/2 by 14-1/2 inches and hinged with linen cloth, each print signed and numbered in black ink on the recto. Oblong quartos, original gilt-stamped brown morocco spines, beige linen cloth. Fourteen American Monuments: slim oblong folio, original photographic self-wrappers, stapled as issued; [pp. 12].

Rare Deluxe limited first edition, number 39 of only 50 copies bound by Moroquain in two volumes, specially reserved for distribution by the photographer, with Volume I containing 218 halftones and Volume II featuring ten original gelatin silver prints-each photograph made, hand-numbered “XXXIX/L” and signed by Friedlander in black ink beneath the image, with laid-in original 12-page booklet entitled Fourteen American Monuments, featuring select black-and-white photogravures.

“More than any other of his generation, Friedlander has shaped the face of contemporary photography” (New York Times). “Twelve years in the making, The American Monument is almost maniacally inclusive, rounding up everything from Plymouth Rock to a plaque commemorating the Pony Express in Salt Lake City and treating them all with the same deliberate nonchalance. The result is overwhelming, as it clearly was intended to be. History stalks the landscape at every turn” (Roth, 236). To noted curator Peter Galassi, Friedlander’s work is “‘full of wit and pleasure… scrambling our notions of what a photograph can be… In 1976, the unfolding of Friedlander’s work gave birth to American Monument, an ambitious book selected from more than 1,000 photographs that delight in the variety of the country’s public monuments” (MoMA). Poised at a key point in his career, Friedlander’s “American Monument is an encyclopedic lesson in how to put a picture together. It is also a lesson in how to put a photobook together… Friedlander’s editing is brilliant” (Parr & Badger II:38). American Monument was one of the first photobooks published by Eakins Press Foundation, “dedicated to the finest standards in publishing and design. In Friedlander’s book they found both a photographer and a subject worthy of their ambitions” (Parr & Badger II:28). Open Book 310.

An exceptionally fine copy.