Day of Paris
FIRST EDITION, complete with 103 evocative black and white Kertész photographs and the rare original dust jacket designed by Alexey Brodovitch.
“In 1945, when André Kertész published Day of Paris, his first book in America, he’d been living in New York for nearly a decade. Like so many other exiled European artists, he’d left Paris before the German invasion, so the photographs in his book were all taken in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Arranged in a loose progression from morning to afternoon to night, these pictures of a peaceful, bustling city were particularly poignant, coming as thy did at the end of the war, and their nostalgia was certainly part of their appeal. Though Day of Paris is full of cityscapes... the photographer is always alert to the human heart of the city, and even his pictures of figures passing on the street are engaging... Some of Kertész’s most famous photos (the disconcertingly fragmented view through a glass clock face at the Louvre, the surreal suburban scene with viaduct and toylike train) are included here.” Alexey Brodovitch “provides a leisurely understated design that allows for double spreads. shrewd juxtapositions, and unexpectedly grand expanses of white space for this small format” (Roth 101). Parr/Badger, Vol I, p.200.
New York: J.J. Augustin, 1945. Quarto (242x110mm / 9.5x7in), original cloth, original dust jacket. Cloth with mild discoloration to top of rear board (as often), residue of tape on the front and rear free endpapers; dust jacket with light edgewear and a few patches of browning to spine. An excellent copy of a notoriously difficult book to find in collectible condition.
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