Sweet Life.

Sweet Life takes its title from the name of a steamboat photographed in the Philippines. Van der Elsken photographed this sprawling odyssey between 1959 and 1960 while travelling with his wife Gerda through Africa, Asia and America. He funded the trip by soliciting two magazine commissions to work along the route and with a stipend from Dutch Television. It is partly devoted to documenting the struggle for independence of the first African nations, done with a certain degree of optimism. Van der Elsken intended for the photograph used on the cover, which shows a man repairing a machine, to symbolise regained autonomy, and in his captions, van der Elsken was critical of the apartheid regime in South Africa and racial segregation in the United States. It was published simultaneously in Dutch, American, German, Austrian and Spanish editions, and two years later in French and Japanese.

During the making of this book, van der Elsken spent an extended period of time in Japan where he befriended Eikoh Hosoe. Sweet Life, like William Klein's New York… (1956) and Andy Warhol's Moderna Museet catalogue (1968) was very popular amongst the emerging generation of Provoke-era Japanese photographers, who seized on many of the ideas in these books and took them to extreme conclusions.

First American edition (published simultaneously in Dutch, German, German book club, and Spanish editions, and two years later in French and Japanese editions); 4to (292 x 295 mm, 11½ x 11½ in); black-and-white photographs printed in gravure, light toning to edges and to first image page from text leaves as usual; endpapers illustrated with images from contact sheets, black cloth-covered boards, spine and upper side stamped in white, small dent to bottom edge, photo-illustrated dust-jacket, small abrasions to head of spine at corners, light marking to upper panel, a close to fine copy; [28], 180pp.

The Photobook A History, I pp254-5; The Dutch Photobook pp120-1; Errata Editions Books on Books 13.