OLAF OTTO BECKER: BROKEN LINE GREENLAND 2003-2006 - Rare Pristine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Signed And Dated by Olaf Otto Becker With Miniature Photograph

Becker, Olaf Otto (Photographer); Badger, Gerry & Schaden, Christoph (Contributors)

ISBN 10: 3775719725 / ISBN 13: 9783775719728

Published by Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2007, 2007

About this Item

1st Printing. Signed. 152 pages. Published in 2007. Collection of color photographs. One of the most beautiful art photography books of our time. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. An austerely elegant production by Olaf Otto Becker: Oversize-volume format. The book weighs 3 pounds. Aquamarine cloth boards with photographic reproduction pasted on the recessed cover and titles embossed on the cover and spine, as issued. Photographs by Olaf Otto Becker. Text by Gerry Badger, the co-author of "The Photobook", and Christoph Schaden. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper in Germany to the highest standards. Without DJ, as issued. Presents Olaf Otto Becker's "Broken Line: Greenland 2003-2006". The kind of photography book that one not only looks at, but in the process of looking, experiences. Most of us will never set foot in Greenland. Olaf Otto Becker has made the trip for us, and we are forever in his debt. "Becker worked for four years and covered thousands of miles by boat creating these photographs of the coastline of Greenland. The resulting images, made in the clear light of the midsummer night over long exposures, are worth the effort. Becker sometimes waited days for the right image or condition to appear in order to produce a single image, a process that left him with only about 25 photographs per year. All of the pictures share the contemplative character of their creator. Becker, who was once a painter, doesn't photograph scenery: He builds compositions, using his eye and his patience, to develop a work of melancholy beauty reminiscent of the powerful iconography of 19th-century Romantic landscapes. The images record the artist's awe at the beauty of creation as well as the dangers facing it" (Publisher's blurb). An absolute "must-have" title for Olaf Otto Becker collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed and dated in pencil on the title page by the photographer: "11.04.2009 Olaf Otto Becker". It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. Becker also pasted a miniature variant-photograph of an image that appears in the book, titled it in pencil, and indicated its exact location (with an arrow, also in pencil) in the map of Greenland that is reproduced on the page. This title is a contemporary photography classic. This is one of few such signed, dated, and "memento-ed" copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Each copy has a unique miniature photograph. A rare signed copy thus. 75 color plates and foldouts. Winner of The German Photography Book Award in 2008. One of the most brilliant photographers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER COPY OF THIS TITLE IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 3775719725. Seller Inventory # 14893

Bibliographic Details

Title: OLAF OTTO BECKER: BROKEN LINE GREENLAND 2003...

Publisher: Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2007

Publication Date: 2007

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: As New

Dust Jacket Condition: None, As Issued

Signed: Signed by Author

Edition: 1st Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

Taken in the clear light of the midnight sun, and therefore almost shadowless, these photographs offer breathtaking views of an untouched landscape from a remote part of our planet. Olaf Otto Becker (*1959 in Travemünde) brings us images of overwhelming beauty, the result of his adventurous journeys in a rubber raft across the icy seas of Greenland. Like Under the Nordic Light, his series from Iceland, the photographs possess a certain melancholy and stillness reminiscent of the grandeur of Romantic landscape painting. At the same time, the outlook of an unperturbed explorer and his recording of exact location when photographing turns them into testimonies to a time when an increasingly warm climate is precipitating the disappearance of the glaciers. In this way, the images record the artist’s awe at the beauty of creation―as well as the dangers facing it. Exhibition schedule: Galerie f 5;6, Munich, April 4. – June 14, 2008