Paris First Edition - Ihei Kimura - Bauman Rare Books

Paris

Ihei KIMURA

Item#: 77942 We're sorry, this item has been sold

Paris

Paris

Paris

Paris

KIMURA IHEI’S PARIS

KIMURA, Ihei. Paris. (Tokyo: Norasha, 1974). Tall octavo, original white cloth, original photographic slipcase.

First edition of this significant work by one of Japan’s most important photographers, with 309 pages of photographs.

“Ihei Kimura… was Japan’s leading photographer of the immediate postwar period, and represented the dominant photographic aesthetic of that era: social documentary based on a broadly humanistic approach… Kimura… [was] influenced by classic photojournalism in the Cartier-Bresson mode, and [was] keen to set Japanese photography on a much more professional basis… Paris was photographed during three visits to the city in 1954, 1955 and 1960, although the book was only published in 1974, the year of the photographer’s death… most of it was shot, in color, in the 1950s. When photographed, it was well ahead of its time… Paris is notable for two things. Firstly, it has a distinctive color palette, composed of cool blues, grays, browns and purples. Secondly, there is Kimura’s view of the city itself, which teeters between conventional travel photography and something much more original… It seems that Kimura decided to revisit the clichés and see what he could make of them, having been given a supply of new color film with which to experiment… What he appears to have discovered is a residue of Atget’s Paris… Kimura’s Paris, like Atget’s, is a nostalgic one, a city of crumbling textures and decaying structures, of courtyards and back alleys, of autumnal mists and winter gloom. Aided by his color palette, it is a much more romantic vision than Atget’s unsentimental view, but his book nevertheless has a distinctive voice that takes him beyond mere romanticism” (Parr & Badger I:268, 297). Text in Japanese.

Photographs, cloth, and slipcase beautiful and fine. A lovely copy of the photographs of one of Japan’s most notable photographers. Rare.

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Aquatint Copperplate process by which the plate is “bitten” by exposure to acid. By changing the areas of the plate that are exposed and the length of time the plate is submerged in the acid bath, the engraver can obtain fine and varying shades of gray that closely resemble watercolor washes. Although the name contains the word “tint”, this is a black-and-white printing process; aquatint plates can often be hand colored, however.
Armorial Used to describe a binding bearing the coat of arms of the original owner, or with bookplates incorporating the owner’s arms.
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Wood-Engraving Engraving made with the graver or burin on the cross-section of a piece of boxwood; the harder wood and finer tools allow for more delicate, finely detailed images, while the block can still be set in the page alongside text and printed on the same stock as the text. While much older, wood engravings enjoyed an important renaissance in the late eighteenth century through Thomas Bewick and continued in popularity thorugh the nineteenth century.
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