Weegee's Creative Camera First Edition - Weegee - Bauman Rare Books

Weegee's Creative Camera

WEEGEE | Roy ALD

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Weegee's Creative Camera

“A MODERN ALADDIN’S LAMP”

WEEGEE. Weegee’s Creative Camera. By Weegee with Roy Ald. Garden City, New York: Hanover House, 1959. Quarto, original black cloth, original photographic dust jacket.

First edition of Weegee’s imaginative insider’s guide to photography, with hundreds of inventive photogravures demonstrating how to create caricatures, in-camera distortions, the photomontage and numerous other fascinating effects.

Born Arthur Felig, the colorful tabloid-news photographer nicknamed Weegee, whose “stage was the street” (Roth, 118), first achieved fame for candid images that revealed the lives of “night people and criminals—with all the sensationalism of dime thriller novels” (Parr & Badger I:120). Here Weegee reveals the tricks of his trade with well-illustrated sections on photographic caricatures, kaleidoscopes, silhouettes, photomontage, and other insider clues—such as on how to shoot around corners. From the library of Daniel Berley, noted collector/publisher closely affiliated with New York’s prestigious Lee Witkin gallery.

Book fine; light edge-wear to bright, price-clipped dust jacket.

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Aquatint Copperplate process by which the plate is “bitten” by exposure to acid. By changing the areas of the plate that are exposed and the length of time the plate is submerged in the acid bath, the engraver can obtain fine and varying shades of gray that closely resemble watercolor washes. Although the name contains the word “tint”, this is a black-and-white printing process; aquatint plates can often be hand colored, however.
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