RARE PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY OF PERSPECTIVE OF NUDES, INSCRIBED BY BILL BRANDT TO RALPH GIBSON, THE PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER WHOSE LUSTRUM PRESS CHANGED PUBLISHING HISTORY

BRANDT, Bill. Perspective of Nudes. With a Preface by Lawrence Durrell and an Introduction by Chapman Mortimer. New York: Amphoto, (1961). Quarto, original patterned paper boards, original dust jacket. $4500.

First American edition of a rare association copy of Brandt’s groundbreaking work, inscribed to Ralph Gibson, photographer and publishing maverick whose Lustrum Press vitally reshaped photobook history, “To Ralph Gibson from Bill Brandt, July 1978,” featuring 90 photogravures of female nudes.

In Perspective of Nudes "Bill Brandt, Britain's preeminent 20th-century photographer," revolutionized photography "by placing his female models in empty rooms and exposing the image so that the outside world can be seen through the windows, [transmuting] architectural space into psychological space… The expressions of the models match the rooms… both have a charged, smoky, forbidden air" (New York Times). In these images Brandt "conjures a world of skewed perspectives in which his nude female subjects appeared to float unanchored or loom like giants" (Roth, 160), evoking "a shadowy vision of somber, enigmatic figures in hyper-spatial rooms, dreamy nocturnal protagonists in situations and mise en scènes that might have been devised by Alfred Hitchcock" (Parr & Badger I:216). First American edition, preceded only by the Paris edition of the same year. Open Book, 188. This exceptional presentation/association copy was signed by Brandt after Gibson traveled to England with the express goal of meeting the photographer whose work so profoundly influenced his own abstract nudes. Gibson has spoken of arriving in Brandt’s town, only to find he had lost the knapsack containing this book. Gibson sought out the local police station where he was surprised and much relieved to recover the book, and brought it with him to that first meeting with Brandt, which initiated a close, rewarding friendship between the two photographers.

Images fresh and bright, light spotting to preliminaries, boards lightly soiled ; some wear to top edge of bright dust jacket, with single tape repair to rear panel. A desirable association copy, rarely found in original dust jacket.