Kurt Blum

Immagine di una fabbrica

[Pictures of a Factory]

1959 First Edition

Immagine di una fabbrica [Pictures of a Factory]. Photographs by Kurt Blum. Text by Michele Parrella. Switzerland. Fretz & Wasmuth Editore, Zurigo, 1959 [reprinted in German edition, 1960]. 102 pp. Quarto. First edition, first printing. Hardcover with cloth spine. No dust jacket as issued. Gravure reproductions. Text in Italian.

Blum was the subject of a 2012 retrospective at the Swiss Foundation for Photography . Immagine di una fabbrica is included in 802 Photo Books. A selection from the M+M. Auer collection

"Kurt Blum (1922-2005), who was born in Berne, was one of the outstanding Swiss photographers of the post-war era. In addition to numerous stories for illustrated magazines, as of the 1950s he also did free artistic and experimental works which were presented to a wider public in exhibitions and publications. The focal points of his oeuvre were the artists’ portraits he took as of the late 1940s, larger work groups on the themes of dance and opera, and an intense involvement through photography and film with the world of industry and labor. Blum always regarded himself as an artist, however, and strove for photography to be recognized as an independent art medium. Above and beyond the documentary aspect, he sought subjective expressiveness, the atmospherically dense moment, the consciously composed photographic print. Blum thus belonged to the avant-garde of Swiss photography, so it is not surprising that he also played a role in the 'subjective photography' circle around Otto Steinert in Germany in the early 1950s....Kurt Blum worked for large industrial companies in northern Italy, leading in 1959 to the book Pictures of a factory (German title Lebendiger Stahl, 1960), in which he presented an almost infernal image of a steel works, sparks flying, by means of black-and-white photographs rich in contrasts"--Swiss Foundation for Photography

Very good. Light wear to the boards. Few scratches and scuff marks. Wear to the board edges. Soil spots to spine. Corners bumped and a bit frayed. Internally, hinges sound. Binding tight. Small tear to the top edge of the first free endpaper. Unmarked. Clean and bright. Photographs printed in gorgeous gravure.