“AN ASTONISHING URGENCY AND DISQUIETUDE”: RARE PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY OF FAREWLL TO BOSNIA, INSCRIBED BY PERESS TO NOTED PHOTOGRAPHER/PUBLISHER RALPH GIBSON

PERESS, Gilles. Farewell to Bosnia. (New York: Scalo, 1994). Folio, original photographic paper-covered boards. $4800.

First edition of Peress’ daring photobook, a rare association copy presented to fellow photographer Ralph Gibson, also renowned for founding the influential Lustrum Press, boldly inscribed in silver felt pen on the first printed leaf, “Pour Ralph, mon ami, Gilles,” featuring over 250 graphic black-and-white photogravures (many double-page).

“Magnum photographer Gilles Peress has made several of the most memorable books published on the world’s recent conflicts” (Parr & Badger II:252). In covering war zones with a distinctive visual approach, “Peress stands in the midst of history-in-the-making” (Roth, 28). In Farewell to Bosnia, a record of events from March to September 1993, “Peress performs with distinction the central function of photographic reportage: he is on the scene… [imparting] an astonishing urgency and disquietude… His formal daring somehow makes palpable the tension of wherever he’s working: Bosnia, Rwanda, Northern Ireland, post-revolutionary Iran.” Without dust jacket, as issued. See Open Book, 330. This rare association copy warmly inscribed by Peress to fellow photographer Ralph Gibson, the pioneering founder of Lustrum Press, whose collaborative approach revolutionized the photobook by offering photographers such as Larry Clark and Robert Frank “a market for the kind of highly personal photography books that regular publishers usually fear to touch” (New York Times). Ownership stamp of Gibson.

A fine association copy with an especially significant provenance. Rare.