Estimate: | £700 - £1,000 |
Hammer price: | £800 |
LEIBOVITZ, Annie (b.1949, photographer). Annie Leibovitz. New York: Taschen, 2014. "SUMO" size, i.e. very large 4to (690 x 500mm). Half title, preface by Steve Martin titled "The Preface No One Will Read", 240 coloured photographed plates by Annie Leibovitz, 8 of which folding, many double-page. Original coloured pictorial buckram boards, burgundy endpapers, dust-jacket with a photograph of Whoopi Goldberg in a bath of milk (some scuffing to the lower wrapper of jacket). FIRST EDITION. The limitation leaf, which is SIGNED BY ANNIE LIEBOVITZ, states: "This book is copy number 8092 in an edition of ten thousand copies plus three hundred artist's proofs." A few remaining copies of this limited edition are available from Taschen priced at £7,500 each. The book was issued with a choice of four different dust-jackets. With the original tripod bookstand designed by Marc Newson (b.1963, leading Australian industrial designer and artist who is, according to Alice Rawsthorn, "one of the most influential designers of his generation"), and the accompanying booklet (4to (358 x 265), original coloured pictorial wrappers) which includes introductions by Graydon Carter and Annie Leibovitz, an interview with the photographer by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and a full index of each photograph with descriptive text, the text in English, German and French. "I like the idea that you can leave the book open to a page and let it stand for days and then change it. It's a collection of prints, although there are rhymes in the pagination. There are riffs. The first two pictures, the portrait of Queen Elizabeth and the photograph of Richard Nixon's helicopter lifting off from the White House lawn after Nixon had resigned as President, were placed where they are because I began thinking of them as bookends for my entire career" (from Annie Leibovitz's introduction). "This much we know: Annie Leibovitz is one of the truly great photographers of our time. Her pictures, superlative in their honesty, range from spontaneously captured reportage to exactingly prepared conceptual portraits, exquisite in their delicate intimacy, but also often deeply visceral in impact" (from the introduction to Hans Ulrich Obrist's interview). The following photographs are illustrated: photograph no. 1) Richard Nixon leaving the White House after his resignation as President, Washington, D.C., 1974; 2) Queen Elizabeth II, The White Drawing Room, Buckingham Palace, London, 2007; 8) Andy Warhol, New York City, 1976; 15) Donald and (a pregnant) Melania Trump, Palm Beach Airport, Florida, 2006; 56) Virginia Woolf's writing desk, Monk's House, Rodmell, East Sussex, England, 2009; 57) The River Ouse, Rodmell, East Sussex, England, 2009, where Virginia Woolf took her own life by drowning on March 28, 1941; and 65) John Lennon and Yoko Ono, New York City, December 8, 1980, the photograph taken just a few hours before John Lennon was fatally shot outside his residence in New York. The original packaging for the bookstand is included in the lot.