“SOIL WHERE THE DEAD ARE MOST PRESENT”

BUJAK, Adam. Oswiecim-Brzezinka. Auschwitz-Birkenau. (Warsaw: Sport i Turystyka), [1973]. Tall quarto, original beige and blue cloth, photographic endpapers, original photographic dust jacket. $1250.

First edition by acclaimed Polish photographer Bujak of Auschwitz-Birkenau as seen over two decades after the Holocaust, with 122 deep, finely screened photogravure plates (many double-page), along with scarce laid-in booklet and dust jacket.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the world renewed its attempt to "achieve some kind of historical perspective" on the Holocaust. Committed to a belief that it is "vital that photography should record what happened… the genocide photobook is an important genre within the remit of concerned photographers" such as leading Polish photographer Adam Bujak (Parr & Badger II: 244, 236). His photographs of Oswiecim-Brzezinka taken in the early 1970s, presented here in 122 powerful photogravures, pay witness, as sculptor Henry Moore once said, to that "soil where the dead are most present." Text in Polish. With laid-in 43-page booklet containing translation of text and captions into English, French, German and Russian.

Faint spotting to wrappers of laid-in booklet; book with images quite fresh, tiny crease to lower edge of plates 5/6; light edge-wear, closed tears, horizontal creasing to lower front panel of bright dust jacket. Near-fine.