LONDON [with] NEW YORK

Facsimile editions of the 1909 and 1910 first editions. Limited edition. Two volumes. Publisher's original quarter brown morocco and grey paper-covered boards, with gilt titles to the spine and upper boards. Housed in the grey paper-covered slipcase with metallic indigo titles to the right side and the publisher's device to the left side. With the accompanying pamphlet and a publisher's notice loosely laid in, as issued. 'London' is illustrated with 20 tipped-in two-tone plates, with a further 20 two-tone plates tipped in to 'New York', all mounted on grey Materica paper. An excellent fine set, the bindings square and firm, bright and fresh. The contents are clean throughout, and without inscriptions or stamps. Housed in the fine, structurally sound slipcase.

A beautiful large-format production of two of the cornerstone photobooks of the twentieth century. Issued in an edition of 500 copies, from which this example is numbered 473 on the limitation pages. A key figure in the development of American pictorialism, photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966) was the first major photographer to emphasize the visual potential of elevated viewpoints, as can be seen here. Coburn's career began at a young age, receiving his first camera at the age of 8 and quickly developing an impressive talent for visual composition and technical proficiency in the darkroom. He swiftly entered the exclusive literary and artistic circles of New York, Paris and London in his later teenage years and early twenties, connecting with and finding mentors in the greatest pictorial photographers and gallerists of the time, including Edward Steichen, Gertrude Käsebier, and Alfred Stieglitz. While an established portraitist, Coburn developed a fondness for cityscapes, finding that they offered more scope for design and pattern, and particularly loved his time spent working in London, famously remarking in a 1906 letter to Stieglitz "After all, there is no place like London. I have never really done any photographic work before - wait until you see the new stuff!". Coburn's photographs, having previously featured in other artists' books and magazines, were finally published independently for the first time as 'London' in 1909, after five years of preparation. 'New York' quickly followed in 1910 in the same format and became notably scarcer than its sister publication. In his autobiography, released the same year of his death, Coburn reflected that "There are countless interesting things in the world waiting to be recognized and captured, and the photographer has unique opportunities for recording for posterity aspects of the world around him. Photography helps us not only to remember, but to see afresh, and to cultivate the capacity to see with more clarity, and this is of great value in the ability to lead a fuller and richer life. [...] Even in 1910 New York was a remarkable place, and I am glad to have recorded it as it was then. The New York book is, I believe, now quite difficult to find, but I often look at my own copy with considerable pleasure, for it brings back to my mind many precious memories of the past" (Gernsheim, Helmut and Alison (edits): Alvin Langdon Coburn, Photographer, An Autobiography 1966).