"HOOKED ON VISUAL PLEASURE": WATER’S EDGE, SIGNED BY PHOTOGRAPHER HARRY CALLAHAN

CALLAHAN, Harry. Water's Edge. (Lyme, Connecticut): Callaway, (1980). Folio, original cream cloth, original photographic dust jacket. $800.

First trade edition of an exceptional photobook by Callahan, ranked in his time as "one of the world's greatest living photographers" (Time), signed by him on the half title, featuring 48 duotone plates (four in a double gatefold spread), in original dust jacket.

"The abstract photographic landscape has always attracted photographers" such as Harry Callahan (Parr & Badger I:310), whose pristine images reveal a "restless formal innovation,… at once supremely rational and expressive, cool but hooked on visual pleasure" (Roth, 168). "Callahan undoubtedly ranks as one of the world's greatest living photographers," a status assured by this collection of 48 finely-screened duotones from photographs taken over four decades (Time). With a poem by A.R. Ammons and afterword by Callahan, who writes that "nearly every artist wants to reach the edge of nothingness-the point where you can't go any farther. I feel I have come close to that at various times with the Beach Series photographs." Published same year as signed limited edition of only 216 copies. Witkin & London, 101. Owner signature.

Book fine; only tiny bit of soiling to rear panel of scarce dust jacket. A fine signed copy.