“CINEMATIC, IMPROVISATIONAL”: FIRST EDITION OF VAN DER ESLKEN’S ONCE UPON A TIME

VAN DER ELSKEN, Ed. Once Upon a Time. Amsterdam: Fragment Uitgeverij, 1991. Large square quarto, original debossed black cloth, original silver foil photographic dust jacket. $650.

First edition of the scarce retrospective volume, with over 200 full-page color and black-and-white photographic images spanning van der Elsken’s career, in scarce silver foil dust jacket.

Over the course of his acclaimed career, Ed van der Elsken was hailed as a “stream-of-consciousness photographer on a par with William Klein” (Parr & Badger I:246). Van der Elsken “turned his books into cinematic self-portraits, photographing and finding the ideal graphic shape for his passions” (Roth, 156). Highlighting work that engages in an “equally cinematic, improvisational, free-association way” (Parr & Badger I:255), Once Upon a Time offers hundreds of van der Elsken’s photographs, including his candid images of jazz musicians and selections from his photobooks—Een Liefdesgeschiedenis in Saint Germain des Prés (1956), Jazz (1959), Bagara (1958) and Sweet Life (1966). With text in Dutch; without scarce “erratum op he colophon.” Rarely found with original silver-foil dust jacket. See Open Book, 184.

Fine condition.