Prismatics: Exploring A New World

First edition of Prismatics: Exploring A New World by David Douglas Duncan (1973). Medium format hardback in very good condition. Intensive wear to outer jacket due to age. Minor sunning to extremities of inner pages. Spine is sturdy. Please see photos for reference. 

About

John G. Morris (1916-2017) was probably the most celebrated photo-editor of the 20th century. He worked with many of the finest photographers - Robert Capa, Cartier-Bresson and W. Eugene Smith. As the London Picture Editor of “Life” during WWII, he was responsible for editing and publishing Capa’s coverage of D-Day. Later, Morris became the Picture Editor of “Ladies Home Journal”, Executive Editor of Magnum Photos, and Picture Editor of The New York Times. Until his death, he toured the world lecturing about photojournalism “If it [a photo] has a message, the message has to come through... But, it should evoke something from the heart. It should pull at you. Not only should it inform you, it should hook you”.

This book was a major departure for Duncan. He is best known as one of the foremost photojournalists of the twentieth century and amongst its finest recorders of war, “Prismatics” shows Duncan breaking down and distorting the image, using the camera, not as “a direct conduit between what I saw and what I recorded” but as a way of creating, from clichéd views of Paris, a “new world”. He is defamiliarizing the familiar.