Brodovitch Alexey Edwin Denby (3 results)

First edition. Oblong hardcover. Reportedly only 500 copies were printed. Features text by Edwin Denby. This book was a revelation with it's design and gritty and grainy collection of images of the Ballet Russe. Includes 104 black and white photographs printed in gravure. A clean near fine copy in a very good plus dust jacket that has splitting to the edges of the spine and wear to the edges. Still, a nicer than usual copy of this classic. Brodovitch's importance and impact on photography and graphic design can't be overestimated. (Parr & Badger v1, 240-241, Roth 110-111).

Hardcover. Condition: Fair to fine condition. Limited edition. 1/500. Oblong Octavo. 143pp. Original light brown, textured boards in original dust jacket; protected by modern mylar. 104 gravure plates; various decorative typefaces on table of contents; plain boards; cloth tape spine; gray printed dust jacket, French fold. Stunning photographs by Alexey Brodovitch. Text by Edwin Denby. "Though Alexey Brodovitch was famous as an art director (his Harper's Bazar stint, from 1934 to 1958, remains one of the most influential in the history of graphic design) and book designer (Richard Avedon's Observations, André Kertész's Day of Paris), he was not known as a photographer until the 1945 publication of Ballet. Critic Jane Livingstone, who drafted Brodovitch as one of the more unlikely members of what she dubbed photography's New York School, speculates that only a few hundred copies of Ballet were ever printed, and that most of them were distributed as gifts to the artist's inner circle rather than to bookstores. But if the book's audience was limited, it was also quite select, and Ballet had enormous impact among the design and photo cognoscenti. The photographs in it were taken between 1935 and 1937, beginning a year after Brodovitch's arrival in New York, and they reconnected him with one of his enduring passions: the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. In New York, he photographed the company in rehearsal, in performance, and backstage, but most of his pictures seem recovered from memory rather than recorded from life. Working with an extremely mobile 35mm camera, Brodovitch captured the ecstasy and essence of the dance in images that shift, dissolve, blur, darken impenetrably, or explode into light. He organized these photos into eleven segments by individual dances (each titled with a different typographic flourish), but the images can barely be confined to their pages much less their sources." (Roth, The Book of 101 Books, pp. 110-113). Contains index at rear. Dust jacket with some wear, some light chipping along edges but front cover detached with three and a half inch chip at tail of spine, light chipping at head. Closed tears at foredge bottom and back edge top. Some staining of front and back flaps of dust jacket. Binding with very light wear and lightly rubbed. Block lightly age-toned though not affecting images. Dust jacket in fair, binding in very good, block lightly age-toned but reproduction of photographs fine. Jacket and binding protected in modern mylar.

Boards in Dust Jacket, Boxed. Condition: Very Good -. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. First Edition. 144pp, 104 illustrations in b&w gravure. In a protective clear acetate dustwrapper. Designed by Alexey Brodovitch. "Ballet" is renowned late graphic designer Alexey Brodovitch's iconic 1945 book of photographic vignettes capturing eleven performances by The Ballets Russes between 1935 and 1937. Noted for the innovative-at-the-time use of murky shadows and blurred dancers bathed in light, these arresting images of the likes of principals Leonide Massine, Tamara Toumanova, Irina Baronova, and more are accompanied by New York poet and dance critic Edwin Denby's brief but cogent text. An internally bright, most handsome example of the first and only edition of this uncommon classic (cited on pages 240-241 of Martin Parr and Gerry Badger's "The Photobook: A History Volume I, pages 136-137 of The Hasselblad Center's "The Open Book: A History of the Photographic Book from 1878 to the Present", and pages 110-113 of "The Book of 101 Books") still in its original notoriously fragile paper dust jacket designed by Brodovitch showing a few flattened soft creases to the front pastedown along with some minor brown spotting to the endpapers. It's highly sulfurous chipboard covers are lightly age-toned with a few brown spots. The book's striking jacket is complete and intact, but lightly worn, soiled, and foxed along the extremities. It is housed in a lavish custom brown cloth over boards clamshell presentation box with pastedowns reproducing the "Ballet" logo on the front cover and spine executed by Woonsocket, Rhode Island's esteemed Dragonfly Bindery. All in all, this is a sharp, internally solid copy of one of the most lauded post-war American photography books aided by the addition of a presentation box that looks far nicer in hand than it describes. Photography Monograph.