PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY OF CALLAHAN’S WATER’S EDGE

CALLAHAN, Harry. Water’s Edge. (Lyme, Connecticut): Callaway, (1980). Folio, original cream cloth, original photographic dust jacket. $1700.

First trade edition, a memorable presentation/association inscribed on the title page to a noted New York editor closely affiliated with the International Center of Photography, “To Anna Winand, Harry Callahan,” featuring 48 duotone plates (four in a double gatefold spread).

“The abstract photographic landscape has always attracted photographers” such as Harry Callahan (Parr & Badger I:310), whose pristine images reveal a “restless formal innovation,… at once supremely rational and expressive, cool but hooked on visual pleasure” (Roth, 168). “Callahan undoubtedly ranks as one of the world’s greatest living photographers,” a status assured by this collection of 48 finely-screened duotones from photographs taken over four decades (Time). With a poem by A.R. Ammons and afterword by Callahan, who writes that “nearly every artist wants to reach the edge of nothingness-the point where you can’t go any farther. I feel I have come close to that at various times with the Beach Series photographs.” Published same year as signed limited edition of only 216 copies. Witkin & London, 101. A rare presentation/association copy from the library of noted editor Anna Winand, a longtime associate of New York’s International Center of Photography.

mages fine and bright, tiny bit of marginal rubbing (22-24) without affecting plates; light edge-wear and soiling to scarce original dust jacket. A near-fine copy with a distinctive association.