Landmark Books in All Fields
ItemID: #100759
Cost: $8,500.00

Images 1923-1974

Ansel Adams

“ADAMS HAD A GREATER IMPACT UPON CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY THAN ANY OTHER PERSON IN THIS CENTURY”: SIGNED LIMITED DELUXE FIRST EDITION OF ADAMS’ IMAGES 1923-1974, WITH NUMBERED EXHIBITION-SIZE GELATIN SILVER PRINT, FERN SPRING, ALSO SIGNED BY ADAMS

ADAMS, Ansel. Images 1923-1974. Boston: New York Graphic Society, (1974). Large oblong folio (14 by 17 inches), original half black morocco with gray cloth boards, photographic endpapers, original photographic dust jacket. Housed in first trade edition slipcase and shipping box. WITH: Mounted gelatin silver print, measuring 9 by 12 inches (matte measures 16 by 20 inches). $8500.

Signed limited first edition, number 387 of 1000 copies, of Adams’ award-winning “ideal book, comprising his personal choice of pictures,” containing 115 superb photolithographs of images personally selected by Adams, this scarce deluxe edition issued with the accompanying exhibition-size mounted gelatin silver print, “Fern Spring, Dusk,” signed by Adams in pencil on the mount.

"Ansel Adams had a greater impact upon creative photography than any other person in this century." Images 1923-1974 is his "first very-large-format book… In full control, Ansel produced his ideal book, comprising his personal choice of pictures, state-of-the-art reproduction, graceful words and elegant design. He selected the 115 photographs that he believed best represented the range of his vision, choosing (as he always did when it was up to him) a wide spectrum of portraits, details, abstracts and occasional quirky subjects, as well as a smattering of his grand landscapes… Images was both a great aesthetic and a commercial success, elected as one of the 50 Books of the Year by the American Institute of Graphic Arts and awarded first prize at the World Book Fair in Leipzig, Germany" (Alinder, 266, 307, 388). To Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Wallace Stegner, who authored the introduction, Adams' "mind and vision, his reverence, his delicacy and strength, will have the power to move and enhance and enlarge us as long as walls exist for photographs" (Miraculous Instants, 51-2). Adams "elevated the act of photography to a religious experience" (Stepan, 96). Book with "First printing 1974" on copyright page. Mount verso of "Fern Spring, Dusk" with printed limitation label numbered "387" and printed label with data information and suggestions for framing. Copies complete with the separate numbered gelatin silver print are quite scarce, as the print is often framed rather than kept with the book. Without original clamshell box; with original slipcase issued with the first trade edition.

Faint foxing to half title only. A beautiful copy in fine condition.

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