Tongue-tied gift-giver? Remember: the picture/word thing is still 1= 1000!

Adams, Ansel, Camera and Lens: The Creative Approach (Morgan & Morgan, 1st rev. ed., 1970, 5th printing, 11/1975, with two-impression lithography). ISBN 0-87100-056-3. The first in Adams’ series on the elements of photography. Even to digital-era readers, there is much to be learned. Adams uses nearly 150 of his own photos to illustrate what he teaches. Hardcover price-clipped dust jacket. Very good condition. Octavo, 302 pp. HBB price: $20.

Philippe Halsman and Salvador Dali, Dali's Moustache (Librairie Ernest Flammarion, dist. by Abbeville Press (1994), 128 pp. hardcover, unclipped dust jacket. ISBN 2-08013-560-0.) Dali answers questions with photos of his languorously long moustaches doing things. A cult classic since the first edition in 1954. Very good condition. Your price: US $25.

Exhibition catalogue, French Primitive Photography (Aperture, Vol. 15, No. 1, Spring 1970), from the showing at the Alfred Stieglitz Center of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, November 17-December 28, 1969. Introduction by Minor White, with commentaries by Andre Jammes and Robert Sobieszek. Paperback, 8.5” x 9.75”, very good condition. Errata sheet laid in at frontispiece. HBB price: $69.

A Delicate Balance: Six Israeli Photographers (The Light Factory, 1996; softcover, 60 pp, ISBN 0-9642772-1-2, 10" x 7.5", very good condition). Your price: US $100. A Delicate Balance: Six Israeli Photographers is the companion volume to a 1996-97 exhibition organized by the Israel/North Carolina Cultural Exchange. The works presented are of contemporary Israeli life as interpreted by the photographers. A second show, in 1997, featured the work of four North Carolina photographers taken during residencies in Israel.

The photographers represented in this elegant volume- printed in English and Hebrew- are Barry Frydlender, Judith Guetta, Gilad Ophir, Michal Rovner, Simcha Shirman and Oded Yedaya. This is a rare and unusual collection by artists how, in the nearly twenty years since, have gone from strength to strength in the international photography world.

Hurlimann, Martin, Picturesque India (Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala & Co., 1st. ed., copyright, 1928, Ernst Wasmuth A.G., Berlin). 304 black and white photographic plates, each with titles in English, French, German and Italian. 32-page introductory text, incl. descriptions of all illustrations. Very good dust jacket with some wear about the edges; orange boards with gold embossed titling and seal. The book condition is excellent. 9.25” x 12”. HBB price: $195.

Stephen King and f-stop Fitzgerald, Nightmares in the Sky: Gargoyles and Grotesques (Viking Studio Books, 1st ed., 1988). ISBN 0-670-82307-4. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, 10.25" x 11.25", very good condition. Horror and suspense writer Stephen King found his first face-to-grimace encounter with a gargoyle, the grotesque waterspouts that have carried water away from the sides of stone buildings since ancient times. Seeing one up close, King writes, is like "having a nightmare awake."

The avant-gardishly named avant-garde photographer, f-stop Fitzgerald, shares King's fascination, and the two collaborated on what became a 1988 best-seller, Nightmares in the Sky: Gargoyles and Grotesques. 100 duotones and 24 full-color images menace and confront the reader in a fascinating, up-close-and-personal encounter with an art form we rarely notice at ground level. HBB price: $75.

Ken Follett and f-stop Fitzgerald, Pillars of the Almighty: A Celebration of Cathedrals (William Morrow, 1st ed., 1st printing 1994). ISBN 0-688-12812-2. Continuing themes established by Nightmares in the Sky six years earlier, photographer Fitzgerald continues his exploration of cathedral art and architecture. This time he collaborates with Ken Follett, whose renowned novel, The Pillars of the Earth, portrays the centuries of labor required to erect a great stone monument to God. 128 pp. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, 10.25" x 11.25", very good condition. HBB price: $60.

Jacob Riis, How The Other Half Lives: With 100 Photos From The Riis Collection (Dover Publications, 1971, 233 pp, paperback, ISBN 0-486-22012-5, 10" x 7 7/8".) Reproduction of the social reformer’s early 20th century documentary of slums in New York. Very good condition. Your price: US $20.

Matthiessen, Peter and Porter, Eliot, The Tree Where Man Was Born/The African Experience (E.P. Dutton, 1st ed., 1972). ISBN 0-525-22265-0. This union of the work of two of the last century’s artistic greats- wilderness writer and novelist Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014) and Harvard M.D. turned wilderness photographer Eliot Porter (1901-1990). I have not been without a copy of this remarkable book since it was published. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, very good condition. HBB price: $40.

William D. Morgan, Henry M. Lester and 14 leading 3-D experts, Stereo Realist Manual (Morgan & Lester,1st ed. October, 1954), 400 pp. hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, Library of Congress #54-11905, 6 1/2" x 9"). Very good condition, rare. Your price: US $100.

By the late 1940s, photography had branched out in all sorts of directions from the relatively simple systems Riis used half a century earlier. One was Seton Rochewite's Stereo Realist 35mm camera, produced by The David White Co. of Milwaukee from 1947 to 1971. In simplest terms, the Stereo Realist camera gave every American his own View-Master.

Stereo film photography took off, and by the mid-50s several of the major players in the film and photographic equipment industry, including Bell & Howell and Kodak, jumped in with models of their own. But they mistimed the market, and by 1960 David White not just the first manufacturer, but the last. Production ceased in 1971 but enthusiasts still bought and used Stereo Realist equipment into the next decade.

Stereo Realist Manual, published at the peak of the craze in 1954, is an evangelist's tract/user guide to the David White camera. Silent film legend Harold Lloyd wrote the introduction; he shot over 200,000 stereo photos, from which his daughter published the collections 3D Hollywood (1992) and Hollywood Nudes in 3D! (2006). Contributors include the ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and art historian Beaumont Newhall. The dust jacket announces, "Here is something new- the first book on stereo photography actually illustrated with color stereos. An amazing new optical Stereo Viewer (it's inside the back cover!) was specially designed for viewing the stereos in this book." Our copy- a first edition- includes the special Stereo Viewer, in its original envelope, behind the back cover just as promised sixty years ago.

Morton, Hugh, Hugh Morton: North Carolina Photographer (UNC Press, 1st ed., 1st printing, 2006). ISBN 0-8078-3073-9. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket. The last collection of work by North Carolina’s “photographer laureate”, Hugh Morton (1921-2006), who seemed to have been everywhere and known everyone, and took the pictures to prove it. From dazzling landscapes to color shots of the Kennedy-Sanford campaign tour of 1960, Morton saw it all. Forward by former UNC President William Friday. Very good condition. HBB price: $40.

Reuterdahl, Ransom, Adamson & Yeto, Japan: Her Strength and Her Beauty (P.F. Collier, 1st. ed, 1904). Hardcover, no dust jacket. Folio size: 12” x 16”. Copiously illustrated by photographs- many full page- this volume was issued at the start of the Russo-Japanese War, and attempted to explain how little Japan, “in the comparatively few years since Commodore Perry pried open a Japanese port, Japan in Asia has become more Europeanized than Russia in Europe;” “the truth about the undersized, nervous, wiry and gritty Japanese man in the forefront as soldier and man-of-war’s man;” and how they were fighting, “not alone for Korean room for their country’s expansion, but also for the cause, as they understand it, of democracy and progressiveness against despotism and duplicity.”

Against a chronicle of the Japanese military forces and their movements in the war is set illustrations of the ancient land from whose temples and trade centers, tea houses, gardens and sacred bridges sprang this new, westernized nation. The odd mix of grudging admiration and racial condescension makes this book a period piece, but the photos are remarkable throughout.

Unpaginated, with burgundy cloth-backed printed brown boards. Cover edges worn; from gutter and separated from the text block. Remarkable and rare. HBB price: $95.

Rattazzi, Priscilla, Best Friends (Rizzoli, 1st ed., 1989). ISBN 0-8478-1058-5. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket. A collection of photos of dogs and their people by Italian born photographer Rattazzi, with a preface by the late industrial magnate Gianni Agnelli. 9.5” x. 13.25”. Excellent condition. HBB price: $65.

*****

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