PUBLISHER
Steidl

BOOK FORMAT
Slip, Hardcover, 5 vols, 11.5 x 14 in. / 224 pgs / illustrated throughout.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 2/23/2016
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2014 p. 108   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783869307435 TRADE
List Price: $125.00 CDN $170.00

AVAILABILITY
Out of stock

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/7/2016

Double Elephant 1973–74

In his 1973 introduction to Lee Friedlander's portfolio for Double Elephant Press, Walker Evans wrote, "Lee Friedlander behaves so subtly with a camera; his pictures are clad so plainly in his own original style, that you wonder just how his mysterious effects are produced. Wondering, you are brought simply to the fact that the wellspring of all art is forever mysterious—even to the artist… Bemusing and sometimes dazzling are these prints from Leica negatives. Seeing a brace of them, it becomes clear that this photographer artist is to be taken seriously even while he is grinning—because he uses photography with deadly aim to reflect and record only his own very special, personal vision of his world. It is oddly refreshing, unselfconsciously striking, and unpredictably adventurous." Featured image is "Shadow – New York City" (1966), reproduced from the deluxe new edition from Steidl, © Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco & Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne. continue to blog

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/8/2016

Double Elephant 1973–74

"Anything and all things are photographs. A photograph can only look like how the camera saw what was photographed. Or, how the camera saw the piece of time and space is responsible for how the photograph looks. Therefore, a photograph can look any way. Or, there's no way a photograph had to look (beyond being an illusion of a literal description). Or, there are no external or abstract or preconceived rules of design that can apply to still photographs. I like to think of photographing as a two-way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing it as it is. A photograph must be responsible to both." - Garry Winogrand, Austin, TX, 1974, from Steidl's gorgeous new slipcased edition presenting the four portfolios of Lee Friedlander and Burt Wolf's historic press, Double Elephant. "Albuquerque, New Mexico" (1958) is © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne. continue to blog

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/9/2016

Double Elephant 1973–74

"La Buena Fama Durmiendo" (1938-39) was reproduced in Manuel Álvarez Bravo's 1974 portfolio for Lee Friedlander and Burt Wolf's Double Elephant Press, all issues of which are now collected in a deluxe, boxed edition from Steidl. What Álvarez Bravo accomplished, according to André Breton, was "to make the full range of Mexican pathos—all its many moving and touching facets—fully understandable to us; any place that Álvarez Bravo has stopped to aim his camera, whenever he has paused to record a play of light, a gesture, some absolutely distinctive moment, or a silence, not only do we know that there lies the breathing heart of Mexico but that it is in such moments and at such places that the artist has been able to have a presentiment—in an act of unique discretion—of the fully objective value of his emotion." Image © Colette Urbajtel/Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo S.C. continue to blog

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/10/2016

Double Elephant 1973–74

"Walker Evans has silently affirmed not only the actual but the ineluctably aesthetic existence of things, of objects. He has required us to recognize that there really are things and persons in the world and that they make an inescapable condition of our lives, whether we like it or not. On the whole, his art puts itself on the side of our liking it, including us to acknowledge the relentless power and mysterious charm of both things, and persons, usually commonplace, mostly sad, often cast off, but permitted by the intermediation of his lens to assert the strangeness and dignity of their perdurable being." Excerpt from Lionel Trilling's introduction to Walker Evans' portfolio for Double Elephant Press and Evans' iconic "Main St., Ossining, New York" (1932) are reproduced from the invaluable new boxed set from Steidl. Image © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitain Museum of Art. continue to blog