Rare books from Passages Bookshop

Eugene, OR: Terri Warpinski, 2014. First printing. (15) pp., 19 x 13 inches. Fourteen image-and-text broadsides, digitally printed using archival pigments on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper, housed in a custom cloth-covered clamshell box, made by Sandy Tilcock of lone goose press. Numbered and signed by the artists in an edition of twenty copies. As of October 2020, just two copies remain available, the rest having found their way into institutional collections. Liminal Matter: Fences pairs arresting images of the U.S.–Mexico border by photographer Terri Warpinski with responses to the images by poet Laura Winter. Warpinski’s photographs document the physical manifestations of the zone where the two nations meet, while Winter’s poems remind the viewer of the social and psychological impact of the border on the people whose lives are defined and delimited by that line. A second portfolio, Liminal Matter: Traces, was published as a companion volume in 2018, and is also available from Passages Bookshop.

London: Marlborough Fine Art, 1983. First printing. 39 pp., 8.25 x 11.5 inches. Perfect-bound in printed wrappers. Illustrated with thirty full-page black-&-white reproductions of paintings, plus color frontispiece. Inscribed and signed by the artist. Light rubbing to wrappers; otherwise fine. Painter Frank Auerbach — along with Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, R. B. Kitaj, Leon Kossoff, Howard Hodgkin, and David Hockney, among others — is typically associated with what is sometimes known as the School of London, a loose grouping of artists, mostly working in London in the 1970s, who were concerned with figuration rather than the dominant trends of abstraction, and conceptual and minimalist art. The term was coined by Kitaj in the catalogue for the 1976 Hayward Gallery exhibition The Human Clay, which he had curated. Auerbach and Kitaj remained close friends until the latter’s suicide in 2007. Auerbach was always less in the limelight than others such as Bacon (who first promoted Auerbach to… Read More

Portland, OR: Artist, 2020. Original work. (40) pp., 5.75 x 10.5 inches. Unique altered book, sewn into card covers collaged with cloth and paper. The latest collage book from Cynthia Lahti, best known for her ceramic and mixed-media sculptures and her drawings. Lahti has repurposed the July 1967 issue of Workers Quarterly, published in Chicago by the Walther League, a Lutheran youth organization, covering all of its surfaces. The book contains 18 double-page spreads, each an independent collage, plus the inner and outer covers. Lahti’s collage books draw their imagery from a wide range of sources, often including books from her own childhood.

Aspen, CO: Valley Kilns, n.d.. Original work. 11.5 inches (diameter). Very good condition, with no chips or other flaws. Garth Williams, the illustrator of Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, the Little House series, and many more beloved books for children, began his career as a fine artist. Though he was born in New York, and spent his early childhood in New Jersey and Canada, his English parents moved the family to London when he was ten years old. After initial studies in architecture, he attended the Royal College of Art in London, where he won a British Prix de Rome for sculpture. Returning to the United States after World War II, he found major success as an illustrator through his work on the books of E.B. White, Margaret Wise Brown, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Russell Hoban, and dozens of others, including many books in the Little Golden Book series. Animals in general, and baby animals in particular, appear throughout his illustrations. This undated ceramic plate, with an original drawing of a… Read More

Bozeman, MT: Doring Press, 2020. First printing. (41) pp., 16.5 x 22 inches (box, closed), 31.5 x 21 inches (book, open). Twenty photographic images, laid out and printed in archival inks on Asuka paper by the photographer, in an edition of six numbered and signed copies. Bound in full cloth, with cloth-covered clamshell box (both with title printed letterpress in metallic ink on front cover) by John DeMerritt in San Francisco. New. The latest volume in Ian van Coller's series of large-format photographic artist's books documenting disappearing glaciers, changing habitats, and other effects of climate change around the world. Van Coller spent several weeks in Antarctica in November 2019, under the aegis of the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Artists & Writers Program; this is the first of several books that will come out of that experience. The images in Fracture were shot on flights between McMurdo Station, Lake Hoare, and the Allan Hills. Each of the twenty images constitutes one… Read More

Bozeman, MT: Doring Press, 2020. First printing. 14.25 x 21.5 inches (closed); 29 x 21.5 inches (open). Printed cloth over boards, in custom cloth-covered clamshell case. With twenty-four color photographs by Ian van Coller, three historic black-and-white images by Herbert Ponting, and an essay (“On the Event Horizon”) by William L. Fox. All images pigment prints on Asuka paper, in a drum-leaf binding. Layout and printing by the photographer; book and binding design by John DeMerritt of San Francisco. Book bound in natural Japanese linen, clamshell case in Blue Dubletta fabric, both stamped in copper. Edition of eight numbered and signed copies. New. The latest in Ian van Coller’s series of astonishing photographic books devoted to documenting disappearing glaciers and remaining natural wonders around the world, meditations on what we stand to lose, in the face of what humans are doing to the planet. This is the second book to come out of Ian’s fall 2019 residency in the National Science… Read More

Portland, OR: Portland Art Museum, 1959. First printing. 10.5 x 4.25 inches (folded). Eight pamphlets, each printed on both sides of a large sheet, folded to make eight pages. Printed by Litho Art in Portland, in an unspecified edition, on the occasion of the Northwest Poetry Meetings held at the Portland Art Museum July 9-12, 1959, in connection with the Museum’s Centennial invitational exhibition, “Paintings and Sculptures of the Pacific Northwest.” Housed in a plain envelope, lettered by hand with the series title, the names of the poets, and the venue (as issued). Pamphlets in very fine condition (one, the Haislip, with a tiny corner crease), with only the barest hint of age-toning, in a near fine example of the envelope (with mild rumpling and three tiny closed tears). The Northwest Poetry Meetings were called together by the Portland Art Museum’s curator of education, Rachel Smith Griffin. She and her assistant, Pauline Illo (later Pauline Eyerly), arranged for the printing of a pamphlet of… Read More

Portland, OR: Don Unrau, 2014. First printing. (23) pp., 16 x 20 inches. Twenty archival digital photographs and text printed by the photographer, housed in cloth-covered folding case constructed by Emily García of Cathemeral Press, in a signed and numbered edition of twenty copies. As new. Vietnam veteran Don Unrau began working on these extended portraits of twenty of his fellow veterans in 1984, inviting each of the subjects to write a text of any length to be printed along with the image, completing them in 1989 while an artist in residence at Light Work in Syracuse, New York. The images were exhibited in various venues, and some were published in periodicals; finally, more than twenty years later, he decided to publish the complete images and texts in this portfolio format. By adapting the capability of contemporary fine art inkjet printers to deploy dozens of colors, and using black and grey values in their place (as well as through his choice of papers), Don was able to achieve a striking… Read More

Eugene, OR: Terri Warpinski, 2018. Second printing. (17) pp., 19 x 13 inches. Fifteen image-and-text broadsides (plus title page and colophon), digitally printed using archival pigments on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper, housed in a custom cloth-covered clamshell box, made by Sandy Tilcock of lone goose press. Numbered and signed by the artists in a 2020 second printing of five copies, after a first printing of ten copies in 2018. Liminal Matter: Traces pairs arresting images of the U.S.–Mexico border by photographer Terri Warpinski with responses to the images by poet Laura Winter. Traces focuses the viewer’s attention on the people caught in between two nations and those who profit from their plight. Visual and poetic pairings reveal artifacts and other evidence of passage and exclusion, providing insight into the struggles and hope of those in flight. Traces is the companion volume to Liminal Matter: Fences, a first portfolio published in 2014 and also available from Passages Bookshop.

Paris: Erotopolis (Maurice Duflou), 1925. First edition thus. 37 + 12 pp., 8 x 10 inches (portfolio), 9.5 x 7.75 inches (prints). Five folded (octavo) text signatures, plus twelve pochoir prints, laid into portfolio of printed paper and cloth over boards, as issued. Prints in fine condition, with occasional tiny spots of foxing not affecting images. Text signatures uncut and in very good condition, with age toning and offsetting to first and last blank page. Portfolio lightly soiled, with mild bumps to corner and small tear to interior paper pastedown, still very good, with remnants of the original ribbon closures. Gerda Wegener (1886–1940) was a Danish illustrator and painter whose representations of women challenged norms of gender and sexuality. She married fellow artist Einar Wegener while still a student; after their relocation to Paris, Einar adopted the name and persona of Lili Erbe. Wegener often used Lili as a model. In 1930, Lili was one of the first people to undergo sex reassignment… Read More

Bozeman, MT: Doring Press, 2019. First printing. (49) pp., 23.5 x 17.5 inches (closed). Reduction woodcuts and archival pigment prints on Asuka and other papers, hand bound in full cloth over boards with printed spine label, housed in cloth-covered clamsell case with matching label, in an edition of twelve numbered copies signed by all three artists. Introductory essay (“The Dance of the Landscape”) by Jeff Rennicke. Layout by Ian van Coller at Doring Press; book design and binding by Rory Sparks in Portland, OR. New. A visual interpretation, in original prints and digital photographs, of the few remnant glaciers in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The second in a series of collaborative works by van Coller, Anderson, and Crownover, following their 2015 book The Last Glacier, which explored the backcountry of Glacier National Park in Montana, and which sold out quickly, finding its way into important institutional and private collections, including the Library of Congress, New York Public… Read More

Tokyo: Akio Nagasawa, 2008–19. First printing. A superb collection of Moriyama’s magazine Kiroku (Record), up to 2019, consisting of the following items, all in mint condition (save for the occasional slightest signs of shelfwear): Issues 1–5: the 2008 reprint of the all-but-unobtainable first five issues, with five facsimile issues in grey card folder, and signed insert; Issues 6–40; each issue roughly 8.5 x 11 inches, ranging from 48 to 192 pages, and signed by Moriyama; Record Extra Issue No. 1, Daido Moriyama’s Snap and Hajime Sawatari’s Tao, bound dos-a-dos, signed by both (2007); (200) pp., 9 x 11.75 inches; Record: Movie in London, DVD with 46-minute documentary shot during Moriyama’s visit to London for his exhibition at the Tate Modern with William Klein, and 15-minute bonus section, Making of Record, with insert signed by Moriyama (2013); Record Desk Calendar, sixteen color reproductions on stiff cardstock, housed in plastic case, signed by Moriyama (2016); Record, anthology… Read More

Portland, OR: Nazraeli Press, 2010-2016. First printing. Cloth over boards in printed dust-jackets, in cloth-covered slipcases. As new. Each of the thirty-six volumes in the Six by Six series presents a single photographic project, accompanied by a numbered and signed, exhibition-quality 11 x 14 original print. Limited to 100 numbered copies, each book is printed on heavyweight Japanese paper and bound in Japanese cloth, with a photographic dust-jacket. Taken together, the set constitutes a portable exhibition of the range of contemporary photography. While individual volumes from the series tend to be listed at anywhere from $1,000–$3,000, and the last complete sets are currently available from the publisher at the publication price of $36,000, this as-new set can be yours for less than half that price. A list of the photographers and titles:  • Anthony Hernandez, East Baltimore  • Todd Hido, Motel Club  • Raymond Meeks, Amwell  • Martin Parr, Machu Picchu  • Toshio Shibata,… Read More

Bozeman, MT: Doring Press, 2019. First printing. (63) pp., 20.5 x 30.5 inches (box, closed), 39 x 29.5 inches (book, open). Layout, design, and printing in archival inks on Asuka paper by the artist, in an edition of eight numbered and signed copies. Landscape photographs and annotations by Ian van Coller; bird photographs by Jose Castaño Hernandez, Aidan van Coller, and Ian van Coller; pencil and watercolor illustrations by Silvina Ospina Cardona. Each copy is accompanied by one of the eight original illustrations reproduced in the book. Bound in full cloth, in cloth-covered clamshell box, by Rory Sparks in Portland, Oregon. New. Growing up in Johannesburg, South Africa, Ian van Coller was a birdwatcher early on, and aspired to be a photographer of the natural world, like those whose images he saw in National Geographic. In the event, van Coller became a different kind of photographer, whose work documenting endangered environments around the world has found powerful expression in a series of very… Read More

Seattle: Mill Mountain Press, 1971. First printing. 56 pp., 6 x 9 inches. Side-stapled and glued into printed card covers. Uncredited frontispiece portrait of the author, and two-color title page illustration, repeated in part on the front cover. The usual sunning to the spine, and three very small discolorations to back cover that suggest strongly that the binding of this issue is actually stapled and then glued into the wrappers (a detail I've not seen previously noted), otherwise very close to fine and uncommon thus. The author's scarce first book, inscribed to publisher E. V. Griffith: For E.V. Griffith, This is about the last book from the original edition; another will be out soon. Frank Stanford Additionally, Stanford has added "Partisan R." to the list of previous publications on the copyright page, in the same ink as the inscription, and someone — almost certainly the author — has in a different color of ink crossed out the last sentence of the short biography on the last page, which… Read More