Sweet life

Ed van der Elsken
Sweet life

Photographs: Ed van der Elsken

Text: Ed van der Elsken

Publisher: Abrams

182 pages

Year: 1966

Comments: Hardcover under dust jacket, 300 x 310 mm. First american edition, 1966. Gravure printing. Text in english. Some edge wear to dust jacket corners and one tear. Little toning on back dust jacket. Binding is fine. Inside bright and clean. Very Fresh copy. Reproductions well preserved. 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."