“AS LITTLE AS A FRACTION OF A SECOND OF TIME”: FIRST EDITION OF REAL TIME, SIGNED BY EVE SONNEMAN

SONNEMAN, Eve. Real Time. 1968-1974. (New York: Printed Matter), 1976. Tall folio, original stiff ivory wrappers. $650.

First edition of Sonneman’s first photobook, a striking volume of 46 diptychs, signed by her on the title page.

“By presenting related pictures in pairs” throughout Real Time, with “diptychs separated by a black line and as little as a fraction of a second of time, Eve Sonneman suggests that all moments are created equal—that ‘decisiveness’ is a convenient fiction… Her paired photographs speak at once to the nature of seeing (as mediated by the camera) and to the nature of the world…. They depict the visual world as a place of marvelous variety and vicissitude, infinitely malleable and fickle.” During the period covered by this first photobook, Sonneman worked “exclusively in black and white, printing adjacent frames from a strip of negatives. These diptychs are predominantly about the changes that occur in very small intervals between the shutter’s clicks” (New York Times). As issued without dust jacket; issued only in wrappers.

Images fine, light soiling and minimal wear to wrappers. A near-fine copy, scarce signed.