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The Museum of Modern Art, Published 1968. Hardcover, 79 pp.; 23 cm; illustrated with black-and-white photographs (61 illustrations), frontispiece portrait of Brassai by Andre Kertesz. Introductory essay by Lawrence Durrell; preface by John Szarkowski; bibliography by Bruce K. MacDonald.
In Very Good condition with a Very Good dust jacket. Blue cloth boards, black lettering on spine; mild shelf and edge wear. Binding tight. Previous owner's bookplate on front pastedown and previous owner's name in ink on front free endpaper. Mild toning to endpapers; pages otherwise clean and unmarked. Glossy white pictorial dust jacket with gray title lettering, Brassai photographs on front and rear panels; a few small nicks and short tears, light creasing along edges, mild shelf and edge wear, faint soiling at head of rear panel. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. Monograph published with the Museum of Modern Art's retrospective Brassai: Photographs (October 29, 1968 to January 5, 1969), selected by John Szarkowski, Director of the Department of Photography. Printed in Switzerland, with design by J. Bourke Del Valle; issued in the same format as the Museum's monographs on Harry Callahan and Dorothea Lange. Szarkowski's preface pairs Brassai with Henri Cartier-Bresson as the two dominant figures in European photography of the preceding thirty-five years. Durrell's essay, written from personal acquaintance, traces Brassai's arrival in Paris as a young painter in 1923, his friendships with Picasso, Dali and Braque, his graffiti work and his film. Plates span four decades, from the Paris by night series of the early 1930s (dance halls, cafes, streetwalkers, Kiki singing in a Montparnasse cabaret, fog on the Avenue de l'Observatoire, the Pont Neuf) to Maxim's, the Place de la Concorde, portraits such as the poet Leon-Paul Fargue, and his photographs of Paris wall graffiti. Contents: Preface and Acknowledgments; Essay by Lawrence Durrell; Photographs by Brassai; Bibliography by Bruce K. MacDonald.