With a Preface by Lawrence Durrell and an Introduction by Chapman Mortimer.
New York, Amphoto, 1961
Bill Brandt found his first attempts at photographing the nude frustrating and sought something that would give him a less conventional image. He subsequently purchased a nineteenth-century view camera with a wide-angle lens, which created a great illusion of space and an unrealistically steep perspective, which distorted the image.
'When I began to photograph nudes, I let myself be guided by this camera, and instead of photographing what I saw, I photographed what the camera was seeing. I interfered very little, and the lens produced anatomical images and shapes which my eyes had never observed. I felt that I understood what Orson Welles meant when he said "the camera is much more than a recording more than a recording apparatus. It is a medium via which messages reach us from another world"'.
First American edition; 4to (275 x 240 mm, 10¾ x 9½ in), black-and-white photographs printed in gravure; original printed paper-covered boards, titles to spine and front in red, original price-clipped photo-illustrated dust-jacket, lightly marked and toned, soiled where laminate runs short, several tears, some strengthened with tape on verso, scratch to rear, fine in a very good dust-jacket; 14, [106]pp.
The Book of 101 Books pp160-1; The Photobook: A History Vol I p216.
'When I began to photograph nudes, I let myself be guided by this camera, and instead of photographing what I saw, I photographed what the camera was seeing. I interfered very little, and the lens produced anatomical images and shapes which my eyes had never observed. I felt that I understood what Orson Welles meant when he said "the camera is much more than a recording more than a recording apparatus. It is a medium via which messages reach us from another world"'.
First American edition; 4to (275 x 240 mm, 10¾ x 9½ in), black-and-white photographs printed in gravure; original printed paper-covered boards, titles to spine and front in red, original price-clipped photo-illustrated dust-jacket, lightly marked and toned, soiled where laminate runs short, several tears, some strengthened with tape on verso, scratch to rear, fine in a very good dust-jacket; 14, [106]pp.
The Book of 101 Books pp160-1; The Photobook: A History Vol I p216.
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