“A RICHNESS OF TONE… A MATTER-OF-FACTNESS THAT IS ADMIRABLE”: FIRST EDITION OF TICE’S FIRST PHOTOBOOK, FIELDS OF PEACE, 1970

TICE, George A. Fields of Peace. A Pennsylvania German Album. Garden City: Doubleday, (1970). Oblong quarto, original debossed black cloth, photographic endpapers, original photographic dust jacket. $750.

First edition, the first photobook by Tice, a rich chronicle of life in the Amish, Mennonite and rural communities of Pennsylvania, with 98 black-and-white photogravures that memorably raise “the ordinary to the level of the particular and the essential” (New York Times).

“There is something 19th century about George Tice’s photographs… reminiscent of old photographs or even steel engravings: a certain loving attention to detail, a penchant for the topographical, a darkness and a richness of tone, a stillness and absence of people.” Like Paul Strand and Walker Evans, to whom Tice has often been compared, his images possess “a matter-of-factness that is admirable. He never paints the lily… Yet Tice has the knack of raising the ordinary to the level of the particular and the essential” (New York Times). The work of Tice was featured in John Szarkowski’s landmark 1978 “Mirrors and Windows” exhibit at MoMA, together with that of Arbus, Friedlander, Winogrand and other stellar postwar American photographers. Scarce first edition, with text by Millen Brand.

Images quite fresh, very lightest rubbing to edges of original cloth; minimal tape reinforcement to lightly toned dust jacket. An impressive, near-fine copy.