ED VAN DER ELSKEN - LOVE ON THE LEFT BANK - 1956 1ST

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Book Description: Liebe in Saint Germain des Pres (Love on the Left Bank). Hamburg, Rowohlt, 1956. 8°. 112 pages. First hardcover edition (German), first printing (published simultaneously in German, Dutch and English). Cited ubiquitously, cfr. Parr & Badger, vol. I, p. 245; Roth, Book of 100 Books, p. 146; and The Open Book, pp. 21 & 168.

Book Condition: Fine in a Near Fine dust jacket with wear to edges (see photos). Overall a tight, clean copy of the true first edition of this classic Van Der Elsken book. Highly collectible.

Ed van der Elsken was the best known internationally of the Dutch photographers of the 1950s and 60s due in no small measure to this book, which took the genre of the Dutch photonovel to a new level, and announced the presence in Europe of a stream-of-consciousness photographer on a par with William Klein The book remains an important and influential early example of a genre that has become increasingly popular in the late 20th century—the diaristic mode (Parr & Badger I:245). Van der Elsken's images of artists, addicts, deadbeats, would-be intellectuals and dealers who lived for the moment were shaped into his first work at the urging of Edward Steichen, who featured the young photographer in a landmark 1953 MoMA exhibit. His blend of informal photojournalism and diaristic note-taking set a precedent for the sort of engaged personal book works that Larry Clark and Nan Goldin would make decades later (Roth, 146). The book's layout accentuates the various photographic methods used by van der Elskin in joining this intimate photonovel to the electrifying urban photo-essays of his generation (Open Book, 21).