"LOOKING AT HIS OWN CULTURE ALMOST LIKE AN OUTSIDER"

WENDT, Lionel. Lionel Wendt's Ceylon. London: Lincolns-Prager, (1950). Quarto, original full black cloth, original photographic dust jacket. $1800.

First edition, illustrated with 120 photogravures of Ceylon by Wendt.

"Lionel Wendt's Ceylon is typical of his photographic style-pictorialist-modernist in the English mode-and illustrates a clash of two cultures, with Wendt looking at his own culture almost like an outsider… Ostensibly a book of personal travel photographs, the usual tropes of the genre are here-lush landscapes, architectural and people studies-all heavily idealized. But there are also a fair number of nude studies, of both males and females… These are typically pictorialist in style, with some Surrealist photomontages thrown in to show that Wendt was thoroughly up-to-date" (Parr&Badger II, 98). Small bookseller ticket.

Book fine, beautiful price-clipped dust jacket with expert tape reinforcement to spine head verso. An about-fine copy.