East 100th Street
“The street was a place I would go each day to see the invisible.” -Bruce Davidson
FIRST EDITION, ASSOCIATION COPY, SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY DAVIDSON: “To Lee Witkin / Bruce Davidson”. Witkin was the enormously influential gallery owner who helped introduce the public to the masterpieces of contemporary photography.
“Davidson returned to this blasted stretch of East Harlem regularly for nearly two years (always bringing prints for the people he photographed) until he and his bulky view camera began to be a part of the block’s daily life... The published results are wrenching and revelatory. Davidson’s strobe doesn’t dispel the gloom or glamorize the ruin of the apartments, storefronts, and rubble-strewn lots where people stopped to pose for him, but the rapport he established allows those people to surrender to the camera with their humanity intact. The book’s glossy duotone reproductions -- all face-to-face on spreads with wide white borders stripped of captions and page numbers -- give the grimiest surfaces a rich warmth and a luxurious sheen” (Roth, The Book of 101 Books). Roth 101. Parr/Badger II.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970. Quarto (11.25 x 12.25 in), original cream linen with photographic image in center, original printed acetate. Small chip to acetate at the top of spine, otherwise fine. A beautiful copy, rare signed and with a good association.
Price: $2,700 .