“THE MURDER OF AMERICAN CITIZENS BY THEIR FELLOW AMERICANS”: SPECIAL LIMITED FIRST EDITION, ONE OF ONLY 30 COPIES SIGNED AND NUMBERED BY JAMES ALLEN AND CRITIC ANDREW ROTH
ALLEN, James et al. Without Sanctuary. Lynching Photography in America. (Santa Fe): Twin Palms, 2000. Quarto, original maroon cloth, photographic endpapers, original photographic dust jacket, original slipcase with custom red morocco spine label.
Special limited first edition issued by the Roth Horowitz Gallery, signed and numbered eight of only 30 copies by collector James Allen and critic/gallery owner Andrew Roth on the title page, with 100 black-and-white and tinted photographs and postcards collected in this profound and “shattering book on lynching in the United States” (Parr & Badger II).
For over a decade, James Allen of George collected postcards and photographs of lynching in America “from witnesses, or their relatives and close descendants… These shameful but telling images of a recent episode in the United States’ past… [provide a] careful, scholarly presentation of the material.” They document that “these horrible events were not only photographed, but that the resultant images were published as postcards and hoarded as morbid souvenirs. Most of the photographers who made them were not dispassionately documenting, but celebrating and ritualizing the murder of American citizens by their fellow Americans” (Parr & Badger II:230). Andrew Roth, noted critic and author, was precise in describing the singular importance of this work; “I am photographically literate. I’ve seen a lot. But I have never seen something like this” (New York Magazine). With essays by New Yorker writer Hilton Als, Georgia congressman John Lewis, historian Leon Litwack and Georgia collector James Allen.
A fine copy.