Search Results: Authors starting with A from The Manhattan Rare Book Company

New York: np, 1933. photograph. Fine. DRAMATIC NEW YORK PHOTOGRAPH SIGNED BY BERENICE ABBOTT; IN UNUSUAL AND EVOCATIVE VERTICAL FORMAT. In this claustrophobic view of Exchange Place, Berenice Abbott (American, 1898 - 1991) focuses on the newly built skyscrapers looming over New York City. To achieve the heightened perspective Abbott cropped the sides of a negative taken in 1933, which was an unusual decision for her. While Abbott's peers and artists affiliated with both the avant-garde and the Art Deco movements occasionally cropped their photos to create a desired mood, Abbott herself rarely did. Here she creates the sensation of an urban canyon in the financial district of New York City. Shafts of light from the cross streets punctuate the walls of skyscrapers and illuminate the pedestrians, who appear as little more than ants. Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio, and in 1918 moved to New York to study sculpture. By 1921 she was studying in Paris and shortly thereafter joined the Man Ray Studio… Read More

San Francisco: np, 1959. First edition. custom folder. Very Good. A LONG LETTER TO A FELLOW PHOTOGRAPHER WITH REVEALING TECHNICAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESS. Written by Adams to fellow photographer Nicholas Dean, this letter engages many topics: first listing off a variety of impressive engagements and exhibits the two were involved with at the time, then settling finally on a detailed section on photographic techniques and tips. Adams explains first that he was arranging the logistics of a film about his life with art curator Beaumont (Newhall) which had been officially released the year before (1958). Then Adams goes on to congratulate Dean for his recent exhibition - a collection of photographs of the Boston Symphony Orchestra - and makes reference to an article called "Swell Egg" written in The New Yorker in October 1953 about the important American landscape photographer Paul Caponigro. Even in the first sentences, it becomes clear how well-ensconced Adams was in the… Read More

Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1974. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. FIRST EDITION, DELUXE ISSUE, one of 1000 copies signed by Ansel Adams and with additional silver print signed by Adams. A FINE COPY. A magnificent production, illustrated throughout with duotone reproductions of Ansel Adams's evocative photographs. Foreward by Wallace Stegner. With the rare signed silver print "Fern Spring, Dusk, Yosemite Valley, California" (12.25 x 9 inches) loose and mounted as issued. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1974. Oblong folio, original black cloth, original photographic dust jacket; housed in original silver-stamped clamshell box and original shipping box. In fine condition with book still shrink-wrapped.

Lancaster and New York: The Physical Review; American Physcial Society; American Institute of Physics, 1948. First edition. original wrappers. Very Good. FIRST PRINTINGS OF THE FOUNDATIONAL PAPERS ON THE BIG BANG AND THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE. Including a fine copy of the famous "Alpha-Beta-Gamma" paper. The Origin of Chemical Elements: "With the experimental and theoretical information now available it is possible to give a tentative description of the structure and evolution of the universe.." Physicist George Gamow "was interested in the Big Bang in relation to nucleosynthesis- the formation of atomic nuclei. Gamow wanted to see whether nuclear physics and the Big Bang could explain the observed atomic abundances," specifically, "whether the early moments of the Big Bang could be responsible for our universe being dominated by hydrogen and helium." With his graduate student Ralph Alpher, Gamow began constructing an ingenius mathematical model that attempted to explain the nuclear processes… Read More

Paris: Crochard, 1820. First edition. Half-calf. Very Good. THE ORIGINS OF ELECTROMAGNETISM. AMPÈRE'S FIRST DISCUSSION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ELECTRIC CURRENT-FLOW AND MAGNETISM. Ampère often worked by publishing his ideas chiefly in Annales de chimie et de physiques, at times as much as once a week. When he had further thoughts on the topic, he would publish revisions. The "first great memoir on electrodynamics", the present paper is the seed of what would become a series of papers "establishing the laws of forces acting between conductors carrying current" (DSB, p. 144; Dibner, Heralds, 62). In this - the first appearance of Ampère's discussion of electric current-flow as it relates to magnetism - Ampère effectively establishes a new field of science and paves the way for developments in electrodynamics. In this volume (the original periodical publication), Ampère's discussion begins on pp. 59-76 and continues on pp. 170-218. AMPÈRE, ANDRÉ MARIE. "Mémoire ... De l'Action mutuelle… Read More

Boston: Garrison and Knapp, 1832. First edition. Original wrappers. Very Good. VERY RARE FIRST PRINTINGS OF THE CONSTITUTION AND DECLARATION OF AMERICA'S FIRST SOCIETIES TO PROMOTE THE IMMEDIATE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. By the first half of the nineteenth century, abolitionism in America was gaining traction in the nation's public conscious. As a movement, organised abolition groups were propelled in particular by Quaker and evangelical communities, who highlighted the fundamentally un-Christian nature of slavery. It is from these roots that the New England Anti-Slavery Society (NEASS), America's first immediatist society, emerged in 1832. Organising a national Anti-Slavery Convention the following year, the early forum for anti-slavery activists advocated in the strongest terms for the total abolition of slavery in all states. Adopting the term from British anti-slavery activists, NEASS and the Anti-Slavery Convention pushed for Immediatism, which "however variously it was interpreted by American… Read More

New York: Charles Cowles, 1971. First edition. Original wrappers, custom box. Very Good. THE GROUNDBREAKING APPEARANCE OF DIANE ARBUS'S PHOTOGRAPH'S IN ARTFORUM. By 1971, "an appreciation of [Arbus's] photography was building in the art world at large... The most gratifying acknowledgement of her as an artist came not from a museum but from a magazine. Through Henry Geldzahler, the contemporary-art curator at the Metropolitan Museum, Arbus arranged a meeting with Philip Leider. The founding editor of Artforum, an influential monthly art magazine that championed modernism, Leider regarded the sculptor and land artist Robert Smithson as the most significant artist of the day. He had never featured a photographer in his pages. He didn't believe photography mixed with painting and sculpture; he wasn't even convinced that it was an art form. But he agreed to meet Geldzahler in Arbus's apartment and look at the pictures in her portfolio. "Even though he was very aware… Read More

Stockholm: Norstedt. 1st Edition. Soft cover. Very Good. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS, of Arrhenius's landmark discovery of the theory of electrolytic disassociation. Arrhenius was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in chemistry "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered to the advancement of chemistry by his electrolytic theory of dissociation." By 1880, "it was known that solutions of certain compounds conduct electricity and that chemical reactions could occur when a current was passed. It was thought that the current decomposed the substance. In 1883 Arrhenius proposed a theory that substances were partly converted into an active form when dissolved. The active part was responsible for conductivity. In the case of acids and bases, he correlated the strength with the degree of decomposition on solution. This work was published as Reserches sur la conductibilite galvanique des electrolytes (1884; Researches on the Electrical Conductivity of Electrolytes) and… Read More

New York: Random House. SIGNED LIMITED EDITION. Fine. SIGNED LIMITED SPECIAL EDITION BOX SET, with two original hand-stamped engraver's proofs. Although the limitation states 250 copies, only about 100 were actually produced. Signed and numbered in the box by Avedon. Issued to accompany the celebrated 1994 Avedon retrospective at the Whitney Museum. With engraver's proofs of Jasper Johns (New York City, 1965) and Jean Shrimpton (Paris, 1970). An Autobiography is lavishly illustrated with 284 photographs documenting Avedon's career from the 1940's to the 1990's; Evidence includes essays by Jane Livingston and Adam Gopnik and is illustrated with over 600 iconic Avedon images. New York: Random House, 1993-94. Folio, original matching full linen with colored lettering, matching clamshell box with blind-stamped title; engraver's proofs in separate paper folders (as issued); with slip denoting "Whitney originals". Fine condition. RARE.

Zurich and Leipzig: Orell Fussli, 1931. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. FIRST EDITION, illustrated with 65 images of the Jewish ghetto in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. With preface by poet Zalman Chneour in Hebrew and German. "In the same year that his Paris was published, Moï Ver - under his real name of Moshé Vorobeichic- produced Ein Ghetto im Osten (A Ghetto in the East). The book, with both Hebrew and German text, featured his photographic record of the Jewish ghetto in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, documenting a way of life that would soon disappear under terrible circumstances. Even more so than Paris, Ein Ghetto im Osten was ostensibly a documentary book, but as he had done in his view of the French city, Moï Ver could not resist pushing the envelope of the documentary form. Once again, he used a variety of New Vision strategies, the most obvious being to take many images from upstairs windows looking on to the narrow streets of Vilnius's old Jewish quarter. This… Read More