1939-1962 Photographs.

ONE OF A SMALL NUMBER BOUND IN CLOTH FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION

Issued as Aperture 10:4, this is one of a small number of copies that Minor White had bound for Sommer to distribute privately. When asked recently, the Frederick Sommer Estate said that they had no specific documentation regarding the number of copies that were bound this way, but added that they would be surprised if it were more than 50.

In December 1961, Minor White invited Frederick Sommer to contribute his work to an entire issue, despite reservations from Ansel Adams, who felt that some advertisers might not approve of Sommer's images of 'dismemberment.' In a letter dated 27 December 1961, White asks that all copy and photographs be completed by 1 October 1962, and suggests, 'This way it can be used as a catalog for the exhibition [at the Art Institute of Chicago, March 9-April 7, 1963]... if necessary, you should go back and reprint significant pictures of your past. I know that you hate to reprint, and I don't blame you, but this should not stand in the way of the pictures that illustrate [a] turning point or stages of achievement.'

Sommer designed, edited and sequenced this issue, which consisted of thirty of his photographs alongside his poetry and prose. No other issues of Aperture were published in 1963, which was the year it became a non-profit foundation.

David Levi Strauss writes that 'with the exception of White's 'quirky, disjointed, and defensive' editor's note and David Campbell's portrait of Sommer, 'this is an almost perfect monograph. It begins and ends with Sommer's exquisite abstractions, and includes some of the best examples of Sommer's work in portraiture, collage, landscape, and still life to date. Every two-page spread reveals something more about the images through their juxtaposition.... This early enactment of Sommer's ideas about the workings of linguistic and pictorial logic is a gem.'

First edition, one of the copies bound in boards for private distribution; (234 x 202 mm, 9¼ x 8 in); 30 black & white photographs, layout and text by Sommer; light foxing to edges and to preliminary and end pages, cream cloth-covered boards, titles to upper side in black, starting at head of spine as is common with this title but holding firm, two sheets of glassine laid in at front and rear as issued, a very good copy.

Frederick Sommer: Selected Texts and Bibliography; Books on Photography III pp45-61; David Levi Strauss in The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century pp162-3; The Open Book: A History of the Photographic Book from 1878 to the Present pp192-3; 802 photo books from the M + M Auer collection 417 [none of which mention the existence of this issue bound in boards].