First edition of one of the landmark twentieth-century photography books. 'Along with Moï Ver's Paris, it is surely the finest example of a modernist photobook in the dynamic, cinematographic mode' (Parr & Padger).

Germaine Krull's Métal is one of the most significant modernist photobooks of the 1920s. It comprises 64 of Krull's photographs of iron structures, including cranes and transport bridges in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Marseille, and Saint-Malo, as well as the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Some were taken on location during the filming of De Brug by her husband, Dutch avant-garde filmmaker Joris Ivens. By employing dramatic, vertiginous close-ups, unconventional angles, and a bold use of the frame's edge, Krull's photographs convey the forward-looking, progressive momentum of modern engineering.

Significantly, despite the plates being loose, they are numbered and therefore envisaged by Krull in a pre-determined sequence. The publication date of December 1927 is given on p.13 in Photographes nouveaux. Germaine Krull par Pierre Mac Orlan (Paris, Librairie Gallimard, 1931).

'Métal is an early celebration of the industrial age, the age of machines. Though photographers would return to this subject often, few ever achieved the buoyancy and exultant freedom of Krull's images' (David Levi Strauss).

64 black & white collotype plates (290 x 226 mm) reproducing Krull's photographs, introduction by Florent Fels, loose in the original paper-covered board portfolio with brown cloth spine and ties, cover design by Lou Tchimoukow incorporates one of Krull's photographs, light toning, rubbing and light marking to sides and extremities, short split to cloth at upper joint, contents lightly toned, light foxing to edges, scattered light foxing to several plates and pastedowns. A very good copy of one of the landmark twentieth century photography books; [viii]pp, 64 plates.

Regards sur un siècle de photographie à travers le Livre, no. 22. The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century, pp46-7; The Photobook: A History I, p95; Paris, Les livres de photographies 1920-1950, pp16-21; What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women 1843-1999, pp60-61.