2NELSON/DOUBLE NELSON: PORTRAITS PHOTOGRAPHIQUES ET UNIFORMES - Rare Pristine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Signed by Charles Freger - ONLY SIGNED COPY ONLINE

Freger, Charles (Photographer) & Kouwenhoven, Bill (Contributor)

ISBN 10: 2915409056 / ISBN 13: 9782915409055

Published by Liege, Belgium: POC Editions, 2005, 2006

About this Item

1st Printing. Signed. 70 pages. Published in 2005. Collection of color portrait-photographs. One of the best titles in the iconic series of "Portraits Photographiques et Uniformes". 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 scarce. A brilliant production by Charles Freger: Regular-sized volume format. Pictorial hard boards with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Photographs by Charles Freger. Text by Bill Kouwenhoven in the French original and felicitous English translation. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper in Liege, Belgium to the highest standards. The reproduction quality is exquisite in its clarity, tonal range, and attention to detail. Without DJ, as issued. Presents Charles Freger's "2Nelson/Double Nelson: Portraits Photographiques et Uniformes". Portraits of wrestlers in Europe. Solo and action sequences rendered with pathos and drama as the intertwined bodies "seem to create a new species of thick-bodied, two-headed quadrupeds" (Bill Kouwenhoven). The work of a brilliant portrait-photographer whose only possible equal is Rineke Dijkstra, the Freger Style is documentary PLUS portrait. His antecedent is August Sander, with an opposite twist: His portraits present not a national community (as Sander does) but the individuals who give a specific community its face and form. As such, his work is neither purely documentary or sociological. His emphasis on individual particularity repudiates nationalism as well as "globalization" and "the human family", the most cherished ideas of humanist-photojournalists (and corporations), as nothing more and nothing less than a myth. Instead, he suggests, human beings choose, almost innately, to identify with a much smaller community than the nation or the UN. With every seemingly exotic portrait, Freger poses the same provocative and compelling questions: Why do I choose to belong to a tribe? Why do I adhere to its rules? Why do I believe in the necessity of social cohesion? Why do I express myself through others? Freger reminds us that so-called personal identity is inconceivable without the notion of belonging to a community; ethnic and sexual minorities understand this instinctively better than anyone else. An absolute "must-have" title for Charles Freger collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed in black pen-marker on the title page by Charles Freger. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a contemporary photography classic. As far as we know, this is only such signed copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. A rare signed copy thus. Lavishly illustrated with color plates. One of the most brilliant photographers of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER CHARLES FREGER TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 2915409056. Seller Inventory # 20425

Bibliographic Details

Title: 2NELSON/DOUBLE NELSON: PORTRAITS ...

Publisher: Liege, Belgium: POC Editions, 2005

Publication Date: 2006

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: As New

Dust Jacket Condition: None, As Issued

Signed: Signed by Author

Edition: 1st Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

Charles Fr ger finds his favorite portrait subjects clustered in social crowds, work teams, or collective structures or communities, and in fact those structures are as much his subjects as the people in them. Where better to look for the forces that draw people together and set them against one another than among children being coached to wrestle? United in purpose and set against one another on the mat, Fr ger's subjects seem to struggle against one another in soundless tension, the squeak of the mat silenced, the smack of a body in the air anticipated--one subject in the process of being hauled over his opponent's back has zero points of contact with the ground.