THE “SOIL WHERE THE DEAD ARE MOST PRESENT”: FIRST EDITION OF BUJAK’S OSWIECIM-BRZEZINKA, WITH 122 PHOTOGRAVURES

BUJAK, Adam. Oswiecim-Brzezinka. Auschwitz-Birkenau. (Warsaw: Sport i Turystyka), [1973]. Tall quarto, original beige and blue cloth, photographic endpapers, original photographic dust jacket. $950.

First edition by acclaimed Polish photographer Bujak of Auschwitz-Birkenau as seen over two decades after the Holocaust, featuring 122 finely screened photogravure plates (many double-page).

In the late 1960s and early 70s, 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 and presented here in 122 powerful photogravures, pay witness, as sculptor Henry Moore once said, to that “soil where the dead are most present.” Essay by Adolf Gawalewicz; text in Polish. Without scarce translation booklet.

Faint dampstaining to upper edges of text, cloth and dust jacket, mildly affecting images. An extremely good copy.