JAN SAUDEK: LIFE LOVE DEATH & OTHER SUCH TRIFLES by Saudek, Jan (Artist/Photographer) & Tournier, Michel (Contributor) - 1991

Amsterdam, Netherlands: Art Unlimited, 1991. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Art Unlimited, 1991. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 160 pages. Retrospective collection of the artist/photographer's work. One of Jan Saudek's most beautiful collections. The First Hardcover Edition. Should not be confused with the Softcover Edition. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original simultaneously with the softcover. Both editions have the same ISBN. The Hardcover Edition is now scarce. One of the earliest collections of his work published outside his native Czechoslovakia, it is a stunningly beautiful production by Milan Jaros: Oversize-volume format. Cloth boards with titles on cover and spine, as issued. Photographs by Jan Saudek. Introduction by Michel Tournier, one of the greatest French novelists of our time, and the author of a great book on photography. Autobiography with accompanying photographs in miniature by Jan Saudek and List of Plates with Captions appended at the end. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper in Amsterdam, The Netherlands to the highest standards. In pictorial DJ with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Presents Jan Saudek's "Life Love Death & Other Trifles". Some of Jan Saudek's finest and most representative images as well as new work that appears in book form for the very first time. An artist in full command of his creative skills and yet practicing it with a rigor that becomes apparent only upon closer examination, Jan Saudek takes photographs at the same spare and dilapidated space/studio. This helps remind Saudek of his humble and poverty-stricken beginnings (which he vowed never to forget no matter what the final outcome of his career) as much as it reminds the viewer that despite the artist/photographer's most extravagant fantasies, the pull of reality remains constant and inescapable. It is apt that the first American book on his work is blandly called "Realities", which of course, is not what his work is about at all unless by reality one means pure subjectivity. Noted for his meticulous composition and painstaking hand-coloring of his prints, the artist/photographer has created a personal, gritty universe, rife with expressions of humor, desire, and despair. Born in Prague in 1935, Jan Saudek achieved fame for his theatrical and controversial photographs of male, female, couple, and orgiastic nudes, which allude both to photography's connection to painting and the whole history of Western portraiture as well as to pornographic pictures shot in studios. His embrace of the pleasures and pains of the human experience is directly evident in his work as is the unencumbered celebration of all people. Blending eroticism with tenderness, violence with Romanticism in a way that longs for the sublime, Saudek earned a considerable international cult following before becoming an important and highly influential mainstream figure. "I don't have the capacity to portray other people's lives. I am portraying my own" (Jan Saudek). An absolute "must-have" title for Jan Saudek collectors. <b><i> This title is a contemporary art photography classic. This is one of few copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. A scarce copy thus. </b></i> 138 plates. One of the greatest artist/photographers of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER JAN SAUDEK TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 9071161137.