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Description

Up For Sale Today is

The Hand of Man on America

by

David Plowden

Hardcover. 4to. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC. 1971. 136 pages. First Edition/First Printing.

DJ has shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities (light chipping present to the upper right corner of the front panel, rear panel rubbed). Bound in cloth boards with titles present to the spine and front board. Boards have light shelf-wear present to the extremities. No ownership marks present.  Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid.

David Plowden achieves in his photographs a political statement about the despoliation of mid 20th century America by the automobile as set against the stark loneliness of our landscape. His tools are the photographic geometry of line and form and the forceful contrast of black and white. Unlike the Parisian chronologist Eugene Atget, unlike Cartier Bresson, the master of form and movement, unlike Steichen's human empathy, what David "Chim" Seymour did for post War refugees, Plowden confronts the clumsy footprint of progress in his clever portrayal of the vast diversity of this country.

Only two shots show people; one of the Phoebe Snow idling at the Scranton train station and the other of a white garage and its owner in Oklahoma; stark, geometric, spell binding. Color is non existent to Plowden and in fact to the B/W photographic world, it distracts from line and form, and confuses the eye. He sprinkles the short book with quotes from Gropius and Ruskin and Le Corbusier.

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Book formats and corresponding sizes  
Name Abbreviations Leaves Pages Approximate cover size (width × height)  
inches cm  
folio 2º or fo 2 4 12 × 19 30.5 × 48  
quarto 4º or 4to 4 8 9½ × 12 24 × 30.5  
octavo 8º or 8vo 8 16 6 × 9 15 × 23  
duodecimo or twelvemo 12º or 12mo 12 24 5 × 7⅜ 12.5 × 19  
sextodecimo or sixteenmo 16º or 16mo 16 32 4 × 6¾ 10 × 17  
octodecimo or eighteenmo 18º or 18mo 18 36 4 × 6½ 10 × 16.5  
trigesimo-secundo or thirty-twomo 32º or 32mo 32 64 3½ × 5½ 9 × 14  
quadragesimo-octavo or forty-eightmo 48º or 48mo 48 96 2½ × 4 6.5 × 10  
sexagesimo-quarto or sixty-fourmo 64º or 64mo 64 128 2 × 3 5 × 7.5  
 

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