WITH 20 EXCEPTIONAL ORIGINAL SILVER GELATIN PHOTOGRAPHS

KAINAR, Josef, editor. Fotografie 1928-58. Prague: Orbis, 1959. Slim portfolio (10 by 12 inches), original stamped linen boards, containing 20 original silver gelatin photographs, each measuring 9-1/2 by 12 inches and imprinted on verso. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $1800.

First edition of a portfolio collection of Czechoslovakian photography, featuring 20 original silver gelatin photographs by the finest Eastern European photographers, including Josef Sudek, Zdenek Tmej, Karel Hájek, Jaromir Funke.

Representing the work of major Czech photographers from post-WWI to 1958, this scarce portfolio contains 20 outstanding original silver gelatin photographs by figures such as Zdenek Tmej, whose photobook Abeceda (1946) is one of WWII's most profound "documents of resistance and survival photographers. The collection also features the luminous "Mé Okno" (1952), a photograph highlighting the "romantic, atmospheric work" of Josef Sudek, whose 1956 Fotografie is "one of the finest books of photography ever made" (Roth, 124, 144). Further, in its inclusion of "Z Cyklu Cas Trvá" (1932), by Jaromir Funke, this distinctive assemblage shows the founding influence of an artist who is perhaps "the most important personality of Czech Avant-garde photography" (Birgus, New Objectivity and Constructivism). In these and the images of other key photographers, such as Karel Hájek's "Zachranený" (1934) and Erich Einhorn's "Za mané?e" (1958), can be found a photographic landscape tracing the "clandestine imperative of much wartime photography [that] figures in late-1940s Czech photography" and the vision of the 20th-century's most influential artistic movements, such as Germany's New Objectivity, the Bauhaus school, modernism and Soviet Constructivism (Parr & Badger, 188). With introduction by editor Josef Kainar printed on front pastedown and photographic information printed on sleeve encasing photographs. Each original photograph with title, date and photographer's name imprinted on verso. Text in Czech.

Photographs fine and bright; only lightest soiling to original portfolio boards. A fine copy.