SCHLES, Ken. Invisible City. (Pasadena, California: Twelvetrees Press, 1988). ARTIST'S PERSONAL COPY

SCHLES, Ken.
Invisible City.
(Pasadena, California: Twelvetrees Press, 1988).

8vo (223 × 168 mm), pp.[80]. 60 black-and-white photographs printed in gravure. Photo-illustrated endpapers. Blue cloth-covered boards, spine and upper side lettered in blind; some signatures starting. Schles’ own facsimile dust-jacket. Signed with an inscription explaining the lack of the dust-jacket in black ink to the title page. Very good.

First edition, Schles’s personal copy, signed with an inscription: ‘For years I held this copy / and showed it until the dust jacket / disintegrated – I’m sorry - / I had to put – this xerox copy on the cover / But it’s a good book, no? / This is me in my / apartment on Mott / many years ago / LA 2009’. In a contemporary review of Invisible City in the Village Voice, Guy Trebay wrote that ‘Schles has an instinct for the vitality of ruins; he understands their texture and their role in dreams... he has also given us a record of the city recognizable not as a movie set or an advertising backdrop, but as a place where humans spend their hopeful, messy lives.’

802 Books from the Collection of M + M Auer p.676; The Photobook: A History vol.III 166.

 

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