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Henson, Bill (Artist/Photographer) & Cooper, Dennis (Contributor) : Bill Henson: Lux Et Nox

Scalo Publishers, Zurich, Switzerland, 2002

ISBN 3908247551

First Edition / First Printing. Fine in Fine Dust Jacket. 200 pages. Collection of nude-cum-landscape color photographs. One of the most beautiful art 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 rare. A stunningly beautiful production by Bill Henson, Martin Jaeggi, and Walter Keller: Oversize-volume format. The book weighs 7 pounds. Black cloth boards with black titles embossed on spine, as issued. Photographs by Bill Henson. Contribution by the avant-garde writer Dennis Cooper. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper by Steidl in Gottingen, Germany to the highest standards. In pictorial DJ with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Presents Bill Henson's "Lux Et Nox". A sequence of photographs of naked couples making love brilliantly juxtaposed with urban nighttime landscapes. The "lux" - light - of the title refers to photography itself. The metaphor of night - for sex and intimacy as well as loneliness and desolation - endows the sequence with a "life-versus-death" significance rarely seen in photography. You will not restlessly flip through but carefully linger over each page. The sequence is poetic; its contemplative effect is powerful. "Bill Henson is a passionate and visionary explorer of twilight zones, of the ambiguous spaces that exist between day and night, nature and civilization, youth and adulthood, male and female. Continues the tradition of Romantic literature and painting in our post-Industrial Age. The rich chiaroscuro, the oscillating light, and the masterful composition of his photographs map enigmatic states escape rationalism's iron grip" (Dennis Cooper). Bill Henson's night-universe is more mythical than real. But there is nothing polemical much less political ("reason versus emotion", "Nature versus Culture") about his art, not in the terms that Dennis Cooper proposes. That Henson used ordinary-looking, "relatable" kid-models (instead of Miss Universe and Physique types) makes his self-created universe more, not less, otherworldly, unattainable, and desirable. What do poets (and psychologists) say about desire? We desire what we see everyday. For better or for worse, some of these things are the products of the post-industrial, global consumerism that Cooper opposes. Together with Trent Parke, Henson has put Australia on the map as a vital center of art photography, that is to say, of the most serious and ambitious contemporary art itself, which has become more, not less, photographically-based. An absolute "must-have" title for Bill Henson collectors. This title is a great art photography book. 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, a pristine beauty. Please note: Copies available online have very serious flaws. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare copy thus. 125 color plates. One of the greatest artist/photographers of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO TRENT PARKE TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 3908247551.

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