ONE OF ONLY 50 COPIES SIGNED BY RAYMOND CARVER AND PHOTOGRAPHER JOEL GARDNER

GARDNER, Joel and CARVER, Raymond. Batavia. Lunenburg, VT: Meriden-Stinehour Press, (1986). Large oblong folio (17 by 21 inches), eight black-and-white photographic prints (8 by 12 inches), matted, title/limitation leaf and essay leaf, together as issued in original gray cloth clamshell box. $3200.

Signed limited first and only edition of this collection of eight photographs by the son of author John Gardner, signed by photographer Joel Gardner and by Raymond Carver, Gardner’s renowned protégé, who contributed an introductory essay.

Each print is numbered, dated and signed in pencil by Gardner. Carver writes in his appreciative essay on Joel Gardner’s work: “I was nineteen years old, just a kid, when I met the photographer’s father and enrolled in his creative writing class. Nothing, and I mean this, has been the same for me since that time. He set an example of a writer at work, working cnotinually, and at the highest pitch always. Judging from these photographs, his son, Joel, has learned more than a little from the high standards his father set for himself and expected of others as well. I wish—how I wish!—the father of the child could be alive to celebrate the appearance of these photographs. John Gardner has been gone from us for a while, nearly four years now, but his spirit lives on through his work and in the person of his artist-photographer son, Joel.” Carver has been described as “one of the masters of American prose… Carver’s language was unmistakably like Hemingway’s—the simplicity and clarity, the repetitions, the nearly conversational rhythms, the precision of physical description” (New York Times). Photographic print of Gardner mounted to title leaf. This is number 9 of 50 numbered copies; an additional 10 lettered copies were also issued for a total edition of 60.

Faint spotting to box. Prints and signatures fine. Scarce.