FACES OF THE RAINFOREST: THE YANOMAMI: PHOTOGRAPHS AND JOURNALS BY VALDIR CRUZ

New York City, NY: Powerhouse Books, 2002. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Powerhouse Books, 2002. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 145 pages. Retrospective collection of black-and-white photographs, accompanied by a journal. One of the most valuable 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 Valdir Cruz and Daniel Power: Oversize-volume format. Red cloth boards with black titles embossed on cover and spine, as issued. Photographs and journals by Valdir Cruz. Essays by Kenneth Good, Vicki Goldberg, the Photography Critic of The New York Times, and Trudie Styler. Together with her rock star-husband Sting, Styler is the founder of the Rainforest Foundation. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper by EBS in Verona, Italy to the highest standards. The reproduction quality is exemplary in eevry respect. In pictorial DJ with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Presents Valdir Cruz's "Faces of The Rainforest". One of the few ground-breaking collections on its subject ever published. "A prophetic portrait of a people on the brink of extinction. The Yanomami, native to Venezuela and Brazil, are descendants of those who migrated over the Bering Strait some twenty centuries ago, and have been residents of the Amazon for the past 15000 years. Though they are one of the last remaining societies untouched by modernization, interference from outsiders has incontestably altered the fragile future of the Yanomami, as documented in 'Darkness In El Dorado' by Patrick Tierney. Like Edward S. Curtis' photographs before him, Cruz's haunting images are made all the more hallucinatory by the knowledge that this ancient culture is about to disappear off the face of the earth" (Trudie Styler). Valdir Cruz is the recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, spent eight months among the Yanomami Indians, and contributed his photographs to "Darkness In El Dorado". His work is in the Permanent Collections of The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and the Brooklyn Museum, among many others, and has been exhibited to critical acclaim throughout the world. He is doing what a philanthropist/conservationist once described as "God's work" even as he has committed himself to photography's oldest and most sacred vocation: Photographing people, places, and things before they finally, completely disappear. An absolute "must-have" title for Valdir Cruz collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed, placed, dated, and inscribed in black ink-pen on the page opposite the title page by the photographer: "Por Martha, In the hope that this may help ignite that necessary sparkle, and that we may work together in a very near future! Abracos, Valdir Cruz NYC 02/03". It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. The recipient, Martha Schneider, who is named, is an important figure in the art and photography world. This title is a contemporary photography classic. As far as we know, this is the only such signed, dated, 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. Lavishly illustrated with black-and-white plates. One of the most brilliant photographers of our time. A fine copy. . ISBN 1576871371.