HORN, Roni. To Place / Lava. [New York]: [Privately printed], 1992.-EDITION OF 100 WITH A PHOTOGRAPH

EDITION OF 100 COPIES WITH A SIGNED PHOTOGRAPH

HORN, Roni.
To Place / Lava.
[New York]: [Privately printed], 1992.

4to (260 x 209 mm), pp.[96]. 29 black-and-white and 16 colour photographs. Design by Horn with Anthony McCall Associates. Orange endpapers. Gelatin silver photograph (253 x 204 mm) signed and numbered in pencil to verso, laid in to card folder at rear. Charcoal grey cloth-covered boards, front lettered in black, silver dot stamped to front and to spine; light rubbing to extremities. Signed and numbered 23/100 by Horn in pencil to colophon. Near-fine.

First edition, one of 100 signed and numbered copies issued with a signed original photograph, from a total edition of 750. Lava is the third volume in Roni Horn’s epic and ambitious, ongoing encyclopedic series ‘To Place’. Each volume deals with a different theme, and together they combine to build a portrait of both Iceland, and the artist herself. Here, she collected and photographed pieces of lava which are reproduced in the book at their actual size. There are currently ten volumes, and Horn has suggested that the series has the potential to continue indefinitely.

Roni Horn first visited Iceland in 1975, and since then it has become the inspiration and location for much of her work. She explains her fascination as being because, ‘Iceland is the place where I have the clearest view of myself and my relationship to the world. By clearest view, I mean a view that is not constricted by social conventions’ (Aarons).

Roth, A., The Open Book: A History of the Photographic Book from 1878 to the Present pp.348-351; Parr, M. and Badger, G., The Photobook: A History Vol. II pp.164-5; Aarons, P. and Roth, A., In Numbers: Serial Publications by Artists Since 1955 pp.386-393.