La Douceur de vivre

Ed van der Elsken
La Douceur de vivre

Photographs: Ed van der Elsken

Text: Ed van der Elsken

Publisher: Editions Cercle d'art

208 pages

Pictures: 153

Year: 1968

Comments: Hardcover under dust jacket; 305 x 305 mm. French edition, 1968 (translated from english title "Sweet life"). Text in french. Gravure printing. Tiny wear to corners. Great condition. Included in The Photobook by Parr & Badger, vol.1, p.254-255. Very scarce and collectible.

In 1960, armed with two magazine commissions and a stipend from Netherlands television, Ed van der Elsken (1925-1990) and his wife Gerda set off on a fourteen-month journey around the world, from West Africa, the Malay Peninsula, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan to the United States and Mexico. Six years after their return, he published his travelogue Sweet Life (named after a little tramp steamer in the Philippines): a sprawling, exuberant chronicle of their journey and his encounters with a range of people in the streets, from joyous lovers to destitute down-and-outs. The book itself exhibited a panoply of layout effects: double-page bleeds, crops, printed in deep gravure, and different cover designs for each of the six countries in which it was published."