BALI by Bristol, Horace - 1949

Tokyo, Japan: East-West, 1949. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. The first in a series of six photographic books by American photojournalist Horace Bristol (1908-97), which he described as "a tourist's book about Bali, photographed with one eye on the calendar, the other on the camera ground-glass. It is no more thorough than can be expected of a five-week visit, spent driving frantically around the island in a hired station wagon, hoping to capture the significance of a mysterious, baffling country in a matter of days." Bristol is perhaps best known for documenting migrant farmers in California's Central Valley with John Steinbeck, photographs that would later be called the Grapes of Wrath collection. Signed by Bristol on the front flyleaf. Square octavo. Original decorative cloth binding, with a paper title label inset on the front. The dust jacket is trifle edgeworn, with some very mild sun fading along the spine and a period bookseller's label to the rear flap; otherwise very good. Housed in a custom wooden slipcase.