Greenwich Village Today & Yesterday

Berenice Abbott

Henry Lanier

 

Harper & Brothers. New York. 1949. Hardcover. In the original cloth. With the scarce original dust jacket. First Edition. Copyright page with First Edition code I-Y indicating publication in September 1949. Text by Henry W. Lanier, editor, writer and son of renowned southern poet Sydney Lanier. Issued as part of the Harper’s Art Library series. See Parr & Badger I:141. With beautiful Berenice Abbott photographs. 9.5 x 6.5 inches. 161 pages. Very good in a very good dust jacket.

Illustrated with 72 striking black and white photographs printed in gorgeous gravure.

Having spent most of the 1920s in Paris photographing such famous literati as James Joyce, Jean Cocteau and Andre Gide, Abbott returned to New York with the intention "to do in Manhattan what Atget did in Paris." Throughout the 30s she captured New York "with a straightforward style that nodded toward 19th-century classicism while signaling a new sort of stripped-down modernism" (Roth, 100). Included here are her images of such artists as Isamu Noguchi, Edward Hopper, John Sloan and William Auerbach-Levy, each in their studios, along with numerous glimpses into the buildings, people and life of Greenwich Village.

Boards with light wear. Clean and bright. Rubbing to the spine ends and corners. Internally, hinges sound. Binding tight. Beautifully printed in gravure. The dust jacket has light wear. Rubbing to the spine and corners. Small Peel to the DJ back cover. A few small circular stains to the DJ back cover. Not price clipped. Now mylar protected. 

A great copy.