Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Futurism Restated

Following up on my photo book collecting tips from last week, Karl Baden recently passed along this nugget from his archives, a complete Friends of Photography book order form circa 1973 containing many drool-worthy titles. Don't the prices look puny? Don't you wish you'd bought them back then and kept them shrinkwrapped in subdued light? Just saying.



4 comments:

GaryS said...

I'll take 2 of item #58 at $4.50 each, please.

Gary

Blake Andrews said...

So you want two work from the same houses sent as works to the same house?

Speaking of that book I came across a copy last fall in a used bookstore in upstate Maine. Looked great but I didn't wind up buying it.

Anonymous said...

Surprised, but glad to see Image Nation on the list.

Microcord said...

I'll have a hundred gas stations (#123), please. Here's twenty bucks, keep the change.

Those would be purely for resale. For me? I'll take two of everything by Les Krims.

Back then, though, I'd probably have been Very Serious and thought that if I didn't understand the Deep Significance of Minor White I soon would, and that this would therefore be a good investment. But as it turned out, I never did understand it.

But maybe I'd have made money on that. (I haven't a clue about the going rate for old books of Minor White.) No, I probably would have got something more hopeless, like the set of Time/Life books.

Martin Parr has spoken. Over the years I've seen eight or so of his top 30 in bookstores, flicked through them, yawned, and put them back. But a few (e.g. Temporary Discomfort) I don't know, look interesting, and are actually still available at the publisher's stated price, or less. So I've got, or ordered, one of each of these. If I like them, I'll keep them; if I don't, I'll unload them once they're out of print.