BALLET (first edition)

Alexey Brodovitch
BALLET (first edition)

Photographs: Alexey Brodovitch

Text: Edwin Denby

Publisher: JJ Augustin

144 pages

Pictures: 104

Year: 1945

Price: 4500 €

Comments: Hardcover, with a stitched book block, exposed coverboards, and a buckram-covered spine; French-wrap dust jacket, the slipcase is missing, 28.3 x 21.6 cm, N&B photographs reproduced in gravure. A very good copy. The dust jacket has been restored.

In Ballet, Brodovitch engaged the image and the book form in ways that continue to fascinate. Printing, however, played an equally decisive role in his experiment. He intensified the grain of his photographic film with an experimental gravure printing method that was risky and unpredictable. The improvised process required the printer to be totally engaged in the moment of creation – analogous to a dancer in performance. His every decision and challenge would be captured on the pages. The inking and scraping mechanisms of the rotogravure press were used to mark the action of dance aggressively across the broad spreads of the book, producing images that often resemble drawings more than photographs. Stray smudges, streaks, and blotches of ink were accepted, and even embraced. Plates wore down, and ink levels fluctuated to the extreme. The exact marks left on the pages – which might be considered flaws in a different production context – were not as important as the fact that they were present and visible as honest and spontaneous marks of the moment of creation.