Josef Koudelka: Limestone (Lhoist), Limited Edition
Publisher: Paris: Éditions de La Martinière, 2001
Edition: 1st Edition
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 2732428388
Condition: As New / No dust jacket as issued
Item #: 112628
$1,650.00
Specifics
First edition, first printing. Limited edition of 500 numbered copies (this being #500/500), stamp numbered on the colophon page. Hardcover. Gray paper-covered boards, with gray endpapers, housed in a corrugated cardboard clamshell case, no dust jacket as issued. Panoramic photographs by Josef Koudelka. Essay (in English, French and German) by Gilles A. Tiberghien. Includes a biography and captions written by the plant managers. 72 pp. with 36 black and white plates. The image size of each plate is 7-3/8 x 22-5/8 inches beautifully printed on heavy stock paper (each reproduction is the length of two folded pages). All pages are attached in a Leporello (accordion-fold) 72 total pages in length. 9-1/8 x 12 inches (the clamshell box is 10-1/8 x 13-1/2 x 2 inches). Out of print (sold out shortly after released). Scarce. [Cited in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook: A History, Volume II. (London and New York: Phaidon, 2006).]
Condition
As New. A Mint copy.
Description
From the Introduction by Jean-Pierre Berghmans: "Over a period of two years, Josef Koudelka traveled through the quarries of the Groupe Lhoist in Europe and America. His camera leads us through our sites and Josef shows us that the industrial exploitation of deposits -- whilst providing the society we live in with an indispensable product -- can also bring a fascinating dimension to the landscape. Born less than a kilometre away from a quarry, I had always felt that industrial sites had nothing but a functional aspect and were devoid of any aesthetic interest. Josef Koudelka has opened my eyes to the beauty of these landscapes. Nature is far stronger than any of us. Josef Koudelka's work is a moving account of nature's infinite capacity for asserting itself."
From the essay by Gilles A. Tiberghien: "Here, the hand of Man is everywhere. Nature is transformed, turned upside down. There is not a square centimetre which has escaped his touch, which has not been carved out, excavated, tamped, or recuperated. Everywhere on the ground the machines have left the trace of their work, showing ever more clearly the presence of cables, pipes, metal girders, steel balls, and dismembered mechanical arms. Nevertheless, we see no one. Here is no human outline to indicate the scale of things, to help us understand their significance. These images show us a world apparently removed from itself. As a result, our eyes must learn to observe, as if for the first and last time, a world of which we believe we are the masters, but actually going beyond what we are capable of imagining, its force rendering derisory the few marks left on its surface. This is a world which is not for Man, a world over which he has little or no sway, a world which suddenly strikes us, rather as when at low tide our eyes seam to reach out to the horizon leaving us with the feeling of being alien to the land which the sea is soon to cover again, like the waters that covered the continents millions of years ago when consciousness had not yet emerged."
