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Andrew Cahan: Bookseller, Ltd.

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THE YOSEMITE BOOK; A DESCRIPTION OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY AND THE ADJACENT REGION OF THE SIERRA NEVADA

THE YOSEMITE BOOK; A DESCRIPTION OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY AND THE ADJACENT REGION OF THE SIERRA NEVADA, AND OF THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA.

[WATKINS]. Whitney, J. [Josiah] D. [Dwight] Large 4to., 116 pp., with 28 albumen prints, each 6 x 8 inches, mounted to cards with lithographed titles and 2 large folding maps, which are slightly creased and fully intact. Publisher's gilt-decorated half purple cloth, with morocco spine and corners, a.e.g. The gilt decorated spine in six compartments has been expertly laid-down on new leather with no chipping or loss. The text leaves show occasional spotting, concentrated largely to the margins of the first and last text leaves. The albumen photographs are clear, bright and with a full range of tonality; only a few images have slight fading at the top or edges, as is customary with Watkin's photos of this era. Housed in a cloth clamshell box with a morocco spine label. Intended to serve as a comprehensive guide to the Yosemite Valley and the High Sierra, the text includes the history, geography, geology, flora, etc. Of the twenty-eight albumen photographs, twenty-four views are by Carleton E. Watkins, one of the first photographers to document the Yosemite, and four by William Harris. The two large maps of the Yosemite Valley and the adjacent area were prepared by Garner and King and Garner and Hoffman, and were the most detailed to their time. An important and rare book; only 250 copies were published. "One of the first American books devoted entirely to photographs of landscape." Truthful Lens No.185; Kurutz and Bothamley, California Books Illustrated with Original Photographs - 1856 - 190, No. 88; Parr and Badger, The Photobook: A History, Volume 1, p. 30; Howes W 389; Graff 4646.
  • $14,500
  • $14,500
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ÉLECTRICITÉ DIX RAYOGRAMMES DE MAN RAY ET UN TEXTE DE PIERRE BOST.

Folio, two unbound folded sheets to make [6] pp. text, with 10 photogravures plates 8 1/16 x 10 1/4 inches [20.48 x [26.03 cm] tipped to a stiff art paper mount 10 7/8 x14 3/4 inches [27.62 x 37.46] each with a titled protective vellum wrapper. The text and prints are laid-in a blank vellum folder, which is mildly creased, and laid-in the four-point printed paper portfolio. This copy has the complimentary slip from the CPDE, which is seldom included. Each plate bears the signature of Man Ray, which was signed in the original negative. This is copy number 409 from a total edition of 500 copies. A fine, near new copy. Aside from a slight bit of toning to the printed four-point paper folder, this is a fine, near new copy contained in a newly made gilt titled leather-backed cloth over boards chemise with matching cloth slipcase. In 1931, the Paris electric company, CPDE, commissioned Man Ray to produce a series of images promoting the various uses of electricity. The resulting portfolio of ten Rayogrammes was issued in 500 copies, which were distributed to the CPDE's best and prospective clients, and not commercially offered for sale. The photogravure prints made from original Rayograms are titled: Electricité, La Ville, Salle de Bain, La Maison, Lingerie, Salle a Manger, Cuisine, Le Souffle, Electricité, Le Monde. In 2014, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Curator in Charge, Department of Photographs, Jeff R. Rosenheim, stated: "This remarkably seductive album of photogravures is an exquisite example of his legacy as America's greatest Surrealist photographer." "Man Ray's ÉLECTRICITÉ is not only one of the most ravishing and sought-after of company photobooks, but it contains a cogent suite of photographs that the leading American Dadaist and commercial photographer himself never bettered." Parr and Badger, The Photobook: A History. Volume II, p.183.
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UNTITLED

Oblong small quarto of 20 leaves of stiff art paper; comprised of a penciled limitation leaf signed and dated 1976 by the artist and numbered 14/20; a leaf signed in pencil by G. Ray Hawkins, publisher, Los Angeles, 1976; 15 leaves each with an original gelatin silver photograph mounted within a debossed frame, followed and three blank leaves at the end. Bound in quarter black calf and charcoal cloth, with the artist and publisher in silver ink on the spine. Housed in a matching slipcase of calf and cloth. Fine. Ron Leighton, born 1944, earned a B.A. in psychology and an M.A. in art from California State University, Fullerton. He taught photography at Saddleback College, Mission Viejo, California, exhibited widely and was represented by the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery. He describes his work as follows: "The relation between man and nature has evolved a genre of its own. The combination of organic and inorganic forms and their arbitrary juxtapositions create new entities which become unique within themselves. When these entities are isolated, i. e. deprived of their natural environment, they are coerced into new relationships, often becoming anomalies - paradoxical and enigmatic. Here is semblance, yet its real meaning is intrinsic to the subject matter - its palpable substance which evokes sentient response." Camera, Lucerne: C.J. Bucher, Ltd, August 1972. This artist's book of 15 studies in lights and form, recall Zen meditations. Printed on Kodatlith gelatin silver paper 5 x 3 3/8 inches.
UNTITLED GELATIN SILVER PRINT

UNTITLED GELATIN SILVER PRINT

Vintage gelatin silver photograph 7 3/8 x 9 3/16 inches [18.54 x 23.34 cm.] The verso bears the printed label of the Carl Siembab Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts, which reads, " Walter Chapel Photograph/ Please return the Print to Gallery." Written in the photographer's distinctive hand, " Return to Walter Chappell, For one-time Repro only, 1958." A fine print. Walter Chappell (1925 - 2000) was affiliated with a long list of noted American photographers: Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Paul Caponigro, Carl Chiarenza, et al. His association with Minor White, as a student, coworker at the George Eastman House, and with Aperture Magazine was one of his most enduring. He was represented by the Carl Siembab Gallery, one of the first galleries devoted solely to photography. In the early 1960s, the home he shared with his wife, the painter, Nancy Barrett Dickinson, was destroyed by fire, taking most of his negatives and prints. Photographs made prior to the fire are rare. This photograph was reproduced as plate XXXVI, the final image in, UNDER THE SUN: The Abstract Art of Camera Vision, By Nathan Lyons, Syl Labrot, Walter Chappell. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1960. "Chappell's Plate XXXVI suggests a galaxy in colliding upsweep. Whatever the photographic source, he has swirled a majestic rhythm of purest spontaneity." Barbara Morgan, 5 REVIEWS OF "UNDER THE SUN", Aperture, Volume 8, N0. 4, 1960.
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BOY WITH CAMERA WORK

Hand-pulled photogravure, 7 5/8 x 5 3/4 inches [19.37 x 14.60 cm] printed on copper plate paper and tipped to tissue, which is tipped to the original laid paper leaf, 11 3/4 x 8 1/8 inches [29.85x 20.96 cm]. Archivally matted on rag board with window overmat. There is a small mark on the blank tissue which does not affect the image. Fine. The image is a fine full-tone photogravure from CAMERA WORK 9, 1905. Clarence H. White (1871 - 1925) was born in West Carlisle, Ohio and moved to Newark, Ohio in 1887. An early interest in art was thwarted by his parents. Employed by a wholesale grocery firm, he began making photographs after a visit to the Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893. In 1898, he exhibited ten photographs at the First Philadelphia Photographic Salon, which brought him to the attention of Alfred Stieglitz and other Pictorialists. By 1899, he was exhibiting widely, acting as a juror for salons, and organizing exhibitions of Stieglitz, Day, Keiley, Käsebier, et al. In 1906, he moved to New York, assisting at the Photo-Secession Galleries. In 1907, he collaborated with Stieglitz on a series of portrait and figure studies, which were subsequently published in Camera Work, and began his first appointment as a lecturer in photography at the Teachers College, Columbia University - followed in 1908 with an appointment at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, and in 1914, he opened the Clarence H. White School of Photography, New York. As a teacher he profoundly influenced the art and technique of a number of important photographers, including: Margaret Bourke-White, Anton Bruehl, Laura Gilpin, Dorothea Lange, Paul Outerbridge, Ralph Steiner, Karl Struss and Doris Ulmann.
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ILLUSORY ARRANGEMENTS

Oblong small quarto of 20 leaves of stiff art paper, comprised of a penciled limitation leaf signed and dated 1977 by the artist and numbered 8/20; a leaf signed in pencil by G. Ray Hawkins, publisher, Los Angeles, 1978; 15 leaves each with an original gelatin silver photograph mounted within a debossed frame, followed by three blank leaves at the end. Bound in quarter black calf and charcoal cloth, with the artist and publisher in silver ink on the spine. Housed in a matching slipcase of calf and cloth. Fine. Diana Schoenfeld, born 1949 and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, attended college in Florida and Switzerland before receiving her M.A. and M.F.A. in photography from the University of New Mexico. She has taught photography since 1975, primarily at the College of the Redwoods, Eureka, California, and exhibited widely in the United States, Canada and Europe. Her 1984 M.F.A. thesis, Symbol and Surrogate: An Interpretive Description of the Picture-Within-the Picture in Photography, was the basis for her curated exhibition held at the Galleries of the Claremont College, and the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and the published catalogue, Symbol and Surrogate, the Picture Within, Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1989. This artist's book of 15 female figure studies 4 3/8 x 3 1/8 inches from the photographer's picture within the picture series are exquisitely composed from multiple negatives and rendered in the mid to lower tonal range.
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SWEETSTUFF: CANDY POLAROIDS

Oblong small quarto of 18 leaves of stiff art paper; comprised of a penciled limitation leaf initialed and dated 1978 by the artist and numbered 20/20; a leaf signed in pencil by G. Ray Hawkins, publisher, Los Angeles, 1979; followed by 17 leaves each with an original color Polaroid diptych, which is titled in ink by the artist and mounted within a debossed frame. Bound in quarter black calf and charcoal cloth with the artist and publisher in silver ink on the spine. Housed in a matching slipcase of calf and cloth. Fine. Victor Landweber, born in Washington D.C. 1941, received his B.A. from the University of Iowa, and his MFA from UCLA, studying with Robert Heinecken. Landweber describes his art: "The inspiration for the main flow of my photographic work comes from artists working in mediums other than photography- especially late Modernist painters, Surrealists, Dada, and conceptual artists whose works have suggested possibilities for addressing my perception about art and its representation in a photograph." Of this artist's book, Landweber states the following on his website: "In 1978 the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, Los Angeles, commissioned a set of small works for a limited-edition, finely-bound book of original photographs. The gallery had previously exhibited my multi-frame Post-painterly Polaroids and Treasure Tones paint-chip pieces, so it made sense for me to create another set of table-top Polaroids for the project. Commercial candies inspired a Pop Art attitude, letting me suggest fantasies of money, sex and empty calories. I still get a kick out of these sweet, quirky pictures." These diptychs, 6 1/4 x 4 1/4 inches or the reverse, were made using Polaroid Polacolor II pack film, an internal dye diffusion transfer process.
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TELEGRAPH POLES

Hand-pulled photogravure, 7 7/16 x 4 3/16 inches [18.89 x 10.50 cm] printed on tissue, tipped to the original laid paper leaf, 11 3/4 x 8 1/8 inches [29.85x 20.96 cm]. Fine. The image is a fine full-tone photogravure from CAMERA WORK 3, 1903. Clarence H. White (1871 - 1925) was born in West Carlisle, Ohio and moved to Newark, Ohio in 1887. An early interest in art was thwarted by his parents. Employed by a wholesale grocery firm, he began making photographs after a visit to the Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893. In 1898, he exhibited ten photographs at the First Philadelphia Photographic Salon, which brought him to the attention of Alfred Stieglitz and other Pictorialists. By 1899, he was exhibiting widely, acting as a juror for salons, and organizing exhibitions of Stieglitz, Day, Keiley, Käsebier, et al. In 1906, he moved to New York, assisting at the Photo-Secession Galleries. In 1907, he collaborated with Stieglitz on a series of portrait and figure studies, which were subsequently published in Camera Work, and began his first appointment as a lecturer in photography at the Teachers College, Columbia University - followed in 1908 with an appointment at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, and in 1914, he opened the Clarence H. White School of Photography, New York. As a teacher he profoundly influenced the art and technique of a number of important photographers, including: Margaret Bourke-White, Anton Bruehl, Laura Gilpin, Dorothea Lange, Paul Outerbridge, Ralph Steiner, Karl Struss and Doris Ulmann.