ABCD.

£10,000 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

one of 20 copies signed by Araki - inscribed by Andrew Roth to Glenn Horowitz A presentation copy inscribed: '6/4/03 / Glenn / Time you learned the / alphabet – / from Roth (the book publisher)'. Andrew Roth and Glenn Horowitz were partners in Roth/Horowitz, a bookselling firm and gallery in New York. ABCD is a facsimile of four of Araki's early 1970s notebooks containing enlarged contact prints from 94 rolls of film. The negatives were processed using an overheated developer solution, which caused the film's emulsion to fracture unpredictably. This physical degeneration of the images suggests an existential interpretation as if they had survived a cataclysmic event or were left after one of the bombs. 'There is little epiphany in the interpretation of subject matter, shifting from generic urban landscape to sexual acts. The marriage of the mundane and the erotic is at the core of Araki's canon and here, in 1972, he is laying the conceptual foundation for all future work'. First edition, number 6 of 20 copies, signed numbered by Araki in black ink on a piece of yellow card tipped in to vol. I, a presentation copy inscribed by Andrew Roth to Glenn Horowitz; 4 vols. (294 x 363 mm, 11½ x 14¼ in); black white photographs; spiral-bound photo-illustrated boards, publisher's red glassine wrapping, minor wear, publisher's cardboard box titled and numbered in black ink to verso of lid; fine. [68]; [70]; [70]; [70]pp.

• Binding: Hardcover

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