“HEART-STOPPING REVELATIONS”

KOUDELKA, Josef. Limestone. (Paris): Éditions de La Martinière, (2001). Oblong quarto, original slate gray paper-covered boards, original shipping container. $1650.

Limited first edition, number 22 of 500 copies, with 36 expressive photogravures offered in leporello (accordion-fold) panoramas that “take the breath away” (New York Times).

Joseph Koudelka, the award-winning Magnum photographer, has earned a reputation for images that "take the breath away… heart-stopping revelations where there seems to be nothing, nothing: a tree rudely cuts into the atmosphere, tractor tracks rupture the earth's skin" (New York Times). In Limestone, this "powerfully original photographer, possessed by a frenzied desire to see" (Frizot, 631), offers 36 evocative photogravures, the work of two years spent photographing limestone quarries in the United States and Europe. It is "a large, handsome production, which features the photographer's panoramas presented in a long, continuous accordion fold… Here, Koudelka gives full reign to these tendencies to make brooding pictures that emphasize the quarrying of limestone not as rape, but as a noble and civilizing act" (Parr & Badger II:202). Text in French, English and German. Without dust jacket, as issued; with original clamshell shipping container.

A fine copy.