“NOT SINCE GOYA HAS ANYONE PORTRAYED WAR LIKE PHILIP JONES GRIFFITHS”: FIRST EDITION OF DARK ODYSSEY

GRIFFITHS, Philip Jones. Dark Odyssey. (New York): Aperture, (1996). Folio, original photographic paper-covered boards, original photographic dust jacket. $175.

First edition, a compelling monograph highlighting four decades in the career of award-winning Magnum photographer Philip Jones Griffiths, with 113 full-page duotones (many double-page), from the collection of noted photojournalist Peter Turnley.

”The best of the books presenting photojournalism as a kind of art, Dark Odyssey puts Philip Jones Griffiths in the company of other British journalists like Donald McCullin and, in an earlier generation, Bill Brandt. Griffiths, a former president of Magnum, gives his pictures a penumbral, sooty tone that bespeaks the Welsh coal mines he saw in his youth” (New York Times). In Dark Odyssey, with images from Griffiths’ beginnings in Wales, across Northern Ireland, Africa, India, Japan and Vietnam, Griffiths displays the same “passionate and skeptical… historical perspective” of his earlier classic Vietnam, Inc.—“the best book on the Vietnam War” (Parr & Badger II:238). As Henri Cartier Bresson noted, “Not since Goya has anyone portrayed war like Philip Jones Griffiths.” With introduction by Murray Sayle. Published in conjunction with a major touring retrospective, 1996-97. From the collection of acclaimed photojournalist Peter Turnley, who has covered “almost every important international news event of the last 15 years” as a leading photographer for Life and Newsweek, and contributing editor for Harper’s Magazine (New York Times).

A fine copy.