[Photobook] RFK Funeral Train

[London]: [Magnum Photos in association with The Photographers' Gallery], 1999. Limited Edition. Card Covers. Fine. True First Edition, No. 183 of 350 print-on-demand copies (numbered on front cover and first page of text), issued to accompany an exhibition at the Photographers' Gallery, London, to demonstrate the potential of Xerox's new xerographic technology (according to the Magnum Photobook, only 200, not 350, copies were actually printed). Introduced by Norman Mailer. Oblong royal 8vo (167 x 250mm): [148]pp, including 68 full-page images of mourners along the tracks as Robert F. Kennedy's coffin was taken by rail to Arlington National Cemetery, printed on Xerox DocuColor 100 Digital Color Press (the later Umbrage Editions issue contains only 63). Original photo-illustrated card covers (with one of nine different cover images). An excellent example of this fragile production, tightly bound and clean throughout (virtually pristine). Parr & Badger II, 46. Magnum Photobook, pp. 118-19. On June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was mortally wounded at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. On assignment for Look magazine, Fusco accompanied the funeral train that carried Bobby's coffin from New York City (the body was flown east from California) to Washington D.C., creating thousands of intensely moving images of mourners from every section of society along the tracks (Kennedy's coffin, in the last carriage, was elevated to make it visible through large observation windows). "When viewed in sequence, either in the book or as a frieze on a gallery wall, [the photographs] have a powerful cinematic quality, and the sense of the train moving past this spontaneous people's guard of honor is almost hypnotic." (Parr & Badger) Fusco shot with Kodachrome, avoiding super-fast shutter speeds, "so that as the light slowly fades during the journey, the crowd seems to dissolve . . . 'America came out to mourn,' he later said, 'to weep, to show their respect and love for a leader, someone they believed in . . .'" (Magnum Photobook) Look published only one photograph—"not because they didn't like them," Fusco told Publishers Weekly in 2008, but because Look was a biweekly, and it was "a little behind the story." After the magazine folded in 1971, the photographs were sent to the Library of Congress, largely forgotten, except by Fusco. "As I remained the owner of my photos," he told L'Indépendant in 2008, "every five years, on the anniversary of Bobby's death, I offered them to magazines. They never took them." That is, until George magazine, one of whose founders was Senator Kennedy's nephew John F. Kennedy Jr., published some to mark the 30th anniversary of the assassination. N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.).