Sweet Life. Photographs, text, and layout by Ed Van Der Elsken. Buchgemeinschafts-Ausgabe, 1966 (German book club edition). Unpaged text (26 pp) + 179 pp. Large square quarto. First edition thus.* Clothbound in photo-illustrated dust jacket. Photo-illustrated endpapers. Gravure reproductions by Tokyo Gravure Printing.
Edition Note: One of two German editions published in 1966 (the other was by M. DuMont Schauberg). They had identical content and layout, but different dust jackets. The two German editions were published simultaneously with first American, Spanish Dutch editions. French and the japanese editons appeared two years later. Worldwide, there were a total of 7 different editions, all identical internally, but with variant boards, dust jackets and slipcases.
"Sweet Life is a sprawling, exuberant cornucopia, a preview of the pure stream-of-consciousness, machine-gun approach that would soon come with the Japanese Provoke photographers. And like the Provoke aesthetic, Van der Elsken's work has its dark and pessimistic undertones, although in Sweet Life bold, frantic energies predominate."--Parr & Badger
Fine- in Fine- dust jacket; a few spots on boards; very slight lean to binding; very slight edge wear to jacket; 1/2" closed tear to upper edge |
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