EUGENE RICHARDS: RED BALL OF A SUN SLIPPING DOWN

Dalton, MA: Many Voices Press, 2014. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. As New/As New Dust Jacket.. Dalton, MA: Many Voices Press, 2014. Hardcover. As New/As New. First Edition/First Printing. 112 pages. Retrospective collection of photographs. One of the most important and most beautiful photography books of our time. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. An austerely elegant production by Eugene Richards: Oversize-volume format. Gray hard boards with metallic-black titles embossed on cover and spine, as issued. Photographs and text by Eugene Richards. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper in Dalton, Massachusetts to the highest standards. In pictorial DJ with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. The photographic reproduction on the cover is vintage, complete with scratches and other flaws that Richards chose not to clean up. Presents Eugene Richards' "Red Ball of A Sun Slipping Down". Evocative photographs of his stay and trips to The South during the Civil Rights Movement Era. "The Arkansas Delta has been called at different times the soul of The South, the land of opportunity, a place ruled by race, a forgotten place. Eugene Richards first went to the delta as a volunteer in 1969. It was less than a year after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , a time when cotton, religion, prejudice, and poverty were what characterized most peoples' lives. Increasingly drawn to this both sorrowful and beautiful place, Richards would stay for more than four years, working as a social worker and reporter until the community service organization and newspaper he helped found were forced to close their doors. But over the years, he would keep returning. A book that speaks of remembrance and change, of struggle and privation, of loving and loss, of then and now. Black-and-white photographs made long years ago but never before published are interwoven with recent color photographs, and with a short story that relates Richards' relationship with an impoverished delta family as well as a growing awareness of his own aging and mortality" (Publisher's blurb) . Best-known for "Dorchester Days" (1978) , his searing photographic account of inner-city upheaval in the Boston area, Eugene Richards shows in "Red Ball of A Sun Slipping Down" that his commitment to his subject - America in the midst of radical change - is lifelong, goes beyond city limits, and underlies his seminal body of work. An absolute "must-have" title for Eugene Richards collectors. This copy is very boldly and beautifully signed and inscribed in black ink-pen on the front free endpaper by the photographer: "For Craig, Eugene Richards". It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. The recipient, Craig Cotsones of Stephen Daiter Gallery Chicago, who is named, worked closely with the photographer for the Chicago exhibition that launched the book. This title is a late-modern photography book classic. As far as we know, this is the only such signed and inscribed copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. A rare signed copy thus. 53 plates. Eugene Richards' "Dorchester Days" was selected as one of the greatest photography books in "The Photobook". One of the most important photographers of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER COPY OF THIS TITLE IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0991218906.