BERNHARD WICKI’S “EXPRESSIVE, PERSONAL MEDITATION ON LIFE”: FIRST EDITION OF ZWEI GRAMM LICHT, 1960

WICKI, Bernhard. Zwei Gramm Licht. [Two Grams of Light]. Zürich: Interbooks, (1960). Quarto, original black cloth, photographic endpapers, original photographic dust jacket. $2700.

First edition, the only photobook by renowned photographer/filmmaker Wicki to be published in his lifetime, with 71 “ravishingly dark gravure” plates (Parr & Badger).

“Zwei Gramm Licht is an expressive, personal mediation on life, and the pictures, by the Swiss filmmaker Bernhard Wicki, are moody, dark and grainy… This mood is emphasized by the ravishingly dark gravure printing, craggy urban portraits, a wrecked car, grizzled tramps… This is a fine photobook, an urban mood piece that chronicles Bernard Wicki’s wanderings across the postwar European landscape” (Parr & Badger I:215). “One of the best known film directors of postwar Germany” for films such as Die Brücke (The Bridge, 1959), Wicki (1919-2000) first discovered his passion for still photography on seeing the work of Robert Capa, and throughout the 1950s explored the streets of Munich, New York, Paris, Tangiers and Vienna with his Rolleiflex and Hasselblad (New York Times). First edition in German, with preface by Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt, text by Georg Ramseger, and list of technical data at rear.

A scarce, exceptionally fine copy.