Eine Handvoll Glück (A Handful of Happiness). Photographs by Dirk Alvermann. Text by Hans Nieland. Layout by Rudolf Grüttner. Hinstorff-Verlag, Rostock, 1969. 143 pp. Small quarto (10.5 x 8.258 in/27 x 21 cm.) First edition. SIGNED on title page. Hardbound with photo-illustrated boards.Illustrated dust jacket. Black-and-white reproductions.
A scarce title from the pre-eminent East German photographer of the 60s and 70s, best known for his 1960 book Algerien L’Algerie. Done in close collaboration with the designer Rudolf Grüttner with a text by Hans Nieland, Alvermann's third book is a photo-novel of sorts--not unlike Van Der Elsken's Love on the Left Bank--told from the perspective of a young shipyard worker Anton. But, rather than the more self-absorbed, angst-ridden existential poses of the protagonists in that book, Anton is more of an allegorical figure. Torn between between fleeing to the West and a difficult reintegration in the GDR, he is an embodiment of the East-West divide at the height of the Cold War.
Near Fine+/Fine-; moderate wear to board edges; slight bump to one corner; Fine- dust jacket with a light scuffing to rear panel; tiny nicks at base of spine.
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