VIGGO MORTENSEN: LINGER

Santa Monica, CA: Perceval Press, 2005. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/No Dust Jacket, As Issued.. Santa Monica, CA: Perceval Press, 2005. Hardcover. Fine/None, As Issued. First Edition/First Printing. 104 pages. Artist Book. One of the most beautiful art photography books of our time. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions, particularly the Softcover Edition. 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 Viggo Mortensen and Michele Perez: Regular-sized volume format. Pictorial hard boards with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Photographs and text by Viggo Mortensen. Excerpts by various great writers: Goethe, Rumi, and James Joyce. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper in Spain to the highest standards. The reproduction quality is exemplary in every respect. Without DJ, as issued. Presents Viggo Mortensen's "Linger". The artist/photographer's black-and-white photographs, poetically captured and impeccably composed, interspersed with texts culled from a lifetime of serious reading. Mortensen contributes his own diary, poetry, a short story, and aphorisms. It is coincidentally apt that Mortensen attained immense worldwide fame as King Aragorn in the "Lord of The Rings" trilogy: His themes as an artist/photographer/writer (who also happens to be a brilliant and charismatic actor) are the quest for identity and authenticity, wisdom and beauty, poetry and transcendence, the exact same themes of Tolkien's masterpiece. Mortensen has produced several Artist Books, all of them beautifully conceived and realized, the most well-known being "Coincidence of Memory", "Hole In The Sun", and "45301". The photographs were taken in various places throughout the world. But what is astonishing about them is that they are neither documentary nor landscape photography. They are instead about the traveller who lingers and takes his time to take the world in rather than the tourist who is just passing through. Photographs of Nature and natural landscapes are often described as "timeless", and are revealing as such: Nature is what exists outside of space and time. Mortensen's landscape photographs are unmistakably about thriving in space and immersing oneself in time. An absolute "must-have" title for Viggo Mortensen collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed and inscribed in black ink-pen on the title page by the artist/photographer: "For Sally Mann, (heart symbol), Viggo". It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. The recipient, who is named, is of course, fellow writer and photographer (of "Immediate Family" fame), one of the greatest artists of our time. Mortensen's penmanship on this copy is the most beautiful we have ever seen. This title is a contemporary art photography 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. Two of the most brilliant artist/photographer/writer/film actors of our time. A fine collectible copy. . ISBN 0977486931.