NEW YORK

First edition, first printing. Folio. Publisher's original quarter calf over grey paper-covered boards, titles in gilt to the upper board, in dustwrapper. Illustrated with 20 tipped-in photogravure plates hand-pulled by Coburn mounted on grey heavy stock paper. A very good copy, the binding square and firm with minor wear and small repairs to the spine ends and a little wear to the lower corners. The contents with light scattered foxing to the text pages are otherwise clean throughout and free free from inscriptions or stamps. The photogravure plates remain exceptionally fresh and bright. Complete with the original very good dustwrapper which has a repaired tear to the foot of the front panel, another each to the head of the front and rear panels, and a little wear and a few minor nicks to the extremities. Housed in a bespoke quarter black leather and grey cloth solander case.

A wonderful example of one of the cornerstone photobooks of the twentieth century, notably scarcer than its pioneering sister publication, 'London', published in the same format in 1909. "Of the two books, it is the New York volume that might be considered the more proto-modernist in spirit, not only because New York itself was the most palpably modern city, epitomized by that great leitmotif of early modernist photography, the skyscraper, but also because the form of the city, as created by these large, monolithic buildings, pushed Coburn towards a more radical way of seeing" (Parr & Badger). Indeed, as the present work demonstrates, in addition to being one of the key figures in the development of American pictorialism, Coburn became the first major photographer to emphasize the visual potential of elevated viewpoints. [Parr & Badger, The Photobook: A History, I, 74; Goldschmidt, The Truthful Lens (1980), 36; Foster, Imagining Paradise (2007), 226]. Provenance: Deaccessioned from the John Teti Rare Photography Book Collection, New Hampshire Institute of Art; private UK collection.