Richard Misrach.

£1,500 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

These photographs are taken with a strobe flash in the desert at night, revealing cacti and details of the desert floor—the artificiality of these images is exaggerated by Misrach's split-tone selenium prints. For Misrach, an important conceptual component of this book is the lack of a title, with the publisher's information appearing on the spine and nowhere else. 'I have an ambivalent relationship to words and photographs,' Misrach declared in a 2011 interview. 'There have been many periods in my career where I've felt that photographs should stand alone... The [book] published in 1979 by Grapestake Gallery was indeed wordless, titleless even. Only the spine had the minimum information required to make it a book. I was trying to deconstruct the conventional supportive material to see what would happen if one created a purely visual book.' First edition, number 19 of 100 clothbound copies; signed on the first page; (305 x 248 mm, 12 x 9¾ in); black-and-white photographs; light toning to edges, plain endpapers, white cloth-covered boards, titles stamped in black on spine, photographic reproduction mounted on upper side, minor marking to boards, publisher's vinyl dust-jacket which is slightly shrunken as usual, contemporary photocopy of an article laid in, a near-fine copy; [112]pp. The Photobook: A History II, p32.

• Binding: Hardcover

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