The Pond.

presentation copy

A presentation copy inscribed to Gus Blaisdell: 'For Gus / [signed] John Gossage - [signed] Denise Sines'.

Gus Blaisdell was a writer, teacher, publisher, editor, and proprietor of the Living Batch bookstore in Tucson, Arizona. He contributed essays to two of Gossage's books, Hey Fuckface (2000) and The Romance Industry (2002), where he wrote, 'Gossage is always about the luxuriance of what goes unnoticed, what goes unseen until his pictures call your attention to it.'

The Pond is a visual meditation on Thoreau's stay at Walden Pond. It contains photographs taken around and away from a pond situated in a plot of wasteland at the edge of a city. Robert Adams wrote of the work that though it 'is believable because it includes evidence of man's darkness of spirit, it is memorable because of the intense fondness he shows for the remains of the natural world'.

First edition, presentation copy inscribed in blue ink on half-title; 4to (279 x 302 mm, 11 x 12 in); black & white photographs, text by Denise Sines, design by Gossage and Gabriele F. Götz; blue cloth-covered boards, spine and upper side lettered in red, original gelatin silver photograph printed by Gossage (126 x 187 mm, 5 x 7¼ in) mounted on upper board (one of six variants), dust jacket printed in pale green, blue, red, and black, light wear to extremities, nick to upper flap-fold, fine in a near-fine dust-jacket; [102]pp (including one gatefold).

The Photobook: A History II, pp36-37.