INSCRIBED BY WILLY RONIS TO FELLOW PHOTOJOURNALIST PETER TURNLEY

RONIS, Willy. Sur le fil du hasard [On Chance's Edge]. (Paris): Contrejour, (1986). Tall quarto, original white cloth, original photographic dust jacket. $1800.

Second edition of Ronis’ award-winning photobook, warmly inscribed by him to renowned photojournalist Peter Turnley, “Pour Peter Turnley, mon ami photographe estimé et talenteux [my esteemed and talented photographer and friend], Willy Ronis, 8/10/05,” featuring 112 full-page and numerous in-text photogravures of Ronis’ work from 1934-79.

"One of France's leading photographers," Willy Ronis began his career with Robert Capa in the 1930s and was featured, along with Cartier-Bresson and Brassaï, in MoMA's 1953 exhibit-Five French Photographers (McDarrah & McDarrah, 390). Following WWII Ronis and photographers such as Doisneau, Boubat, Izis and Riboud came to share a quiet, often profound attention to the everyday, a particularly "lyric mode… a vision of the world that is singularly moving" (New York Times). The first French photographer to work for Life Magazine, Ronis received the prestigious Nadar Prize for Sur le fil du hazard, only his second photobook, which includes his famous image of bullet holes on a plate glass window following the Liberation of Paris ("Place Vendôme") and the luminous portrait of his wife bathing at an open window ("Le nu provençal"). Text in French. Second edition, very rarely seen, preceded by the virtually unavailable 1980 first edition. This scarce copy from the collection of Peter Turnley, the renowned photographer for Newsweek and contributing editor for Harper's Magazine who has covered "almost every important international news event of the last 15 years" (New York Times). With laid-in four-page booklet from the subsequent 1991 edition.

A fine copy, with a distinctive association.