“A SEDUCTIVE BLEND OF GALLIC SENSUALITY AND RUSSIAN GLOOM”

FUNKE, Jaromír. Jaromír Funke Fotografie. (Praha): Odeon, (1970). Octavo, original stamped cream cloth, original photographic dust jacket. $750.

First edition of a handsome posthumous tribute to Jaromír Funke, “who epitomized the vanguard spirit of European photography between the wars” (New York Times), with frontispiece and 131 velvety photogravure plates.

This splendid posthumous retrospective spans several decades in featuring 131 full-page photogravures of the finest work by Jaromír Funke, “who epitomizes the vanguard spirit of European photography between the wars” (New York Times). Funke stood at the center of Prague’s flourishing renaissance, where “Czech art and photography [became] an intriguing mixture of cultural influences… Photographers like Jaromír Funke, Franti?ek Drtikol, Josef Sudek and Jindrich Styrský borrowed freely from East and West, and their work is a seductive blend of Gallic sensuality and Russian gloom” (Parr & Badger I:87). Co-founder of the avant-garde Czech Photographic Society in 1924, along with his longtime friend Josef Sudek, Funke is “regarded as the greatest personality of Czech photography” of his time (Antonin Dufek). Text in Polish by Ludvík Soucek. With laid-in errata slip. Bookplate stamp on colophon; small numerical notation on front free endpaper.

Book fine; light edge-wear, small closed tear to front panel of bright, near-fine dust jacket.