MELL KILPATRICK: CAR CRASHES & OTHER SAD STORIES

Cologne, Germany: Benedikt Taschen Verlag, 2000. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. As New/As New Dust Jacket.. Cologne, Germany: Benedikt Taschen Verlag, 2000. Hardcover. As New/As New. First Edition/First Printing. 175 pages. Retrospective collection of photographs on subject. One of the most brilliant photography books of our time. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. A brilliant production by Benedikt Taschen: Oversize-volume format. Pictorial hard boards with titles on cover and spine, as issued. Photographs by Mell Kilpatrick. Essay by Jennifer Dumas. Pictorial Biography appended at the end. Stunning pictorial endpapers. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper by Taschen in Cologne, Germany to the highest standards. In matching pictorial DJ with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Presents Mell Kilpatrick's "Car Crashes & Other Sad Stories". Unflinching photographs, unmatched in their gruesome-ness and tragedy, worthy of comparison with Weegee at his best. Here are some of the most horrific images Kilpatrick routinely took, with detail and nuance, factual accuracy and precision, and an unblinking eye at the dark side of our passionate love affair with the car. Like many love affairs (the book should have been called "Car Crashes And Other Love Stories"), the endings have often been bloody and deadly. Mell Kilpatrick was a movie projectionist in 1940's California when he bought a camera and made himself invaluable to insurance companies and the highway patrol, as a photographer of auto wrecks and later, as a news photographer. His imagery may have been influenced by the films he saw from the projection booth, notably their chiaroscuro effect. "An unsparing archive of human tragedy. Deals in different ways with the reality of sudden death" (Publisher's blurb). Car crashes have inspired at least one literary masterpiece, J. G. Ballard's "Crash". The grisly fascination they have for us helps explain why there remains such a clamor to see the censored photographs of the mortally wounded Diana, Princess of Wales, the most famous victim of a car crash, precipitated, ironically enough, by "paparazzi" photographers. An absolute "must-have" title for Mell Kilpatrick collectors. This title is a photography classic. This is one of few copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws because they have been pored over again and again. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce copy thus. 165 black-and-white plates. One of the most remarkable photographers of the 20th century. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO WEEGEE TITLE IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 3822864110.