MANIFESTAZIONE DE S[AN] REMO [Album of Italian Fashion Photographs] by URBANI, Eda (Photographer) - 1937

Sanremo, 1937. Hardcover. Near fine. Small oblong 4to. album, in string-tied cloth-covered boards. 36 gelatin-silver prints, plus nine prints of fashion-figure drawings, all 9" by 6.75" approx. and mounted on stiff gray leaves with handwritten captions throughout; 24 of the prints signed (stamped) by Eda Urbani. Album appears complete and is about near fine, with a bit of rippling to some pages, but all photos remain bright, clean, and sharp.

Album documenting a fashion show held on Jan. 16-17, 1937, with most photographs taken by Eda Urbani (1908-2001), a female Italian photojournalist who covered the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and later became an interior designer. Her work was the subject of a 2008 traveling exhibition compiled by Turin's Associazione per la Fotografia Storica (which described her "one of the first female photojournalists") and is uncommon at auction. This album includes photos of women sporting fashions by Italian designers, all credited in the captions (Rivella Torino, Gambino Torino, others), and displaying styles emblematic of the period: heavy fur coats, billowy dresses, and hat veils. Altogether a gorgeous display of period fashion, and a fine record of the photo work of Urbani, whose work remains largely unheralded outside Italy.