LEICA 1937 PHOTO ANNUAL.
Henry Lester [Editor], Barbara Morgan [Designer]
Henry Lester [Editor], Barbara Morgan [Designer]: LEICA 1937 PHOTO ANNUAL. New York: The Galleon Press, 1936. First edition. Quarto. Double wire parallel binding. Photo illustrated thick wrappers. 180 pp. Black and white gravure plates. Artists biographies. Trade advertisements. Cover design and mise-en-page by Barbara Morgan. Spine and endpapers reinforced with vintage tape. Wrappers worn. Textblock and plates generally bright and clean. Uncommon. A nearly very good copy.
8.75 x 11.75 spiral-bound softcover book with 180 pages of gorgeous full-page black and white gravure plates printed at the Beck Engraving Company. This Annual presents a very democratic selection of New Vision and FSA imagery captured by the miniature Leica camera gathered from three annual International Leica Exhibits held at Rockefeller Center in the early thirties. Highly recommended.
Includes work by M. F. Agha, Anton F. Baumann, June Bershard, Julien Bershard, Konrad Kramer, Robert Disraeli, Ivan Dmitri, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Eugene Erbit, William Fisher, Charles R. Frazier, William Howard Gardiner, Max P. Haas, Harold L. Harvey, Douglas Haskell, Victor R. Haveman, Martha Havemeyer, John Hoellerer, Rudolf H. Hoffmann, Burton Holmes, Ole M. Hovgaard, Charles F. Jacobs, Theodore Jung, Ernst Kassowitz, Rockwell Kent, Hans Kloss, Robert B. Kolsbun, Manuel Komroff, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Dudley Lee, James M. Leonard, Henry M. Lester, C. J. Lewis, Rev. Leon M. Linden, Thomas D. McAvoy, Peter A. Mayer, Charles E. Mohr, Barbara Morgan, Gilbert Morgan, Helen Morgan, Willard D. Morgan, John T. Moss, Jr., Frank Navara, Dr. K. Winfield Ney, Harris W. Nowell, Alfred Person, Laurance A. Peters, Charles Peterson, Charles A. Proctor, Arthur Rothstein, Carola Rust, Ed Schaefer, F. W. Schlesinger, Herbert H. Schoenlank, Louis Schuck, Ben Shahn, Albert Dixon Simmons, Richard L. Simon, Peter Stackpole, Marian Stephenson, Richard Thorpe, John B. Titcomb, Carl Van Vechten, King Vidor, Henry L. Washburn, Dr. Stephen White, Fritz Wilkinson, Dr. Paul Wolff, Augusta Wolfman and Richard C. Wood.
In 1925, the critic, poet, and one of the founders of Surrealism, Andre Breton, posed the question: "when would 'all the books that are worth anything stop being illustrated with drawings and appear only with photographs?"A few short years after this statement, the photographic image had established itself as one of the most provocative, poetic, and radical forms of representation in modern society. A plethora of groundbreaking exhibitions, books and publicity, the work of some of the most influential figures in history of photography, ushered in the creative flowering of the medium across Europe. Unquestionably the increasingly effective presence of photography was tied to the emergence of these new recruits and their passionate conviction regarding its creative worth. It was out of this hotbed of revolution in the photographic form, that the influential photographic annuals of the 1930s were published. [Kerry William Purcell]