An Afternoon in Astoria - Hardcover

Burckhardt, Rudolf

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0870704362 ISBN 13: 9780870704369

Publisher: Museum of Modern Art, 2002

Synopsis

In February 1940, Rudy Burckhardt spent an afternoon in Astoria, Queens, photographing the streets of the neighborhood, its gas stations, cars, children at play and other everyday scenes. Burckhardt later mounted a group of the photographs in a spiral-bound album, and wrote on the cover, in neatly printed letters, "An Afternoon in Astoria." This handmade book, unpublished until now, composes a tour of this part of New York, its empty lots and abandoned cars made poetic by Burckhardt's eye. The Museum of Modern Art recently published An Afternoon in Astoria and has also produced a limited-edition, boxed, spiral-bound facsimile of the original handmade album. An immaculately produced clothbound box with tipped-in reproductions from the book inside-and-out contains the album facsimile and a separately bound essay by Sarah Hermanson Meister, Associate Curator in the photography department of the Museum, discussing Burckhardt and specifically the groups of photographs he bound into albums for the pleasure of himself and his friends.

About this title

Synopsis

In the early 1940s, Swiss-born photographer and experimental filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt focused his photography on finding beauty in the uncelebrated and untidy details of life in and around Astoria, Queens, New York. This book, unpublished until now, contains 35 gelatin silver prints of his seminal photographs of Astoria. For the first time, Burckhardt's carefully constructed, filmlike sequences - the unique intersection of his work in photography and film - will be enjoyed by the public at large.

Edition details

• Publisher: Museum of Modern Art
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0870704362
• ISBN 13: 9780870704369
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 36
• Editor: Meister Sarah Hermanson