Diary of a Century. Photographs and text by J.H. Lartigue. Edited by Richard Avedon. Designed by Bea Feitler. Viking Press, New York, 1970. Unpaged. Folio. First U.S. edition.* Clothbound in dust jacket. Numerous gravure illustrations printed in Switzerland by C.J. Bucher. Library protector.
Title page contains a tipped in, printed presentation card from the French advertising agency Lintas:Paris with Lartigue's signature (with his characteristic, tiny sun insignia); it reads, "We sincerely wish that 1972 will be a happy and memorable year in your own diary of his century. December 1971." Additional notations in an unknown hand.
*IMPORTANT NOTE: Perhaps for the purposes of presentation, the first U.S. edition of the book, published by Viking, was paired with the jacket from the first U.K. edition, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (see spine illustration)
"This remarkable diary, was known only to family and friends until 1962, when some of the photographs were exhibited in Paris. The next year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted a show and produced a catalogue with an introduction by John Szarkowski.... [Lartigue] had the perfect temperament to be the chronicler of an optimistic age"--David Levi-Strauss, writing in Roth et. al., The Book of 101 Books
Small bookseller's sticker on front inside flap of dust jacket; additional tiny (1/2") chip to lower corner of front panel of jacket with small area of staining to upper corner of rear panel; otherwise Fine- in Fine- dust jacket. |
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