Aaron Rose: Photographs (Only Signed Copy)

Essay and interview by Alfred Corn

ISBN 10: 0810942240 / ISBN 13: 9780810942240

Published by Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2001

About this Item

First Edition (NAP) (Harry N. Abrams=NAP). 'With 100 photographs in full color.' Once listed, it appears this will be the Only signed copy for sale anywhere on the Internet. The book is flat-signed off the top edge of the front end paper. Both the book and the dust jacket are in excellent condition. I'll get to describing them in a moment. Here are some bits and pieces I have lifted out from an article about Mr. Rose in the New York Times after he had died in 2021, an article that quoted in part from another article that was written in the Times in 1997. 'Mr. Rose was that rarest of artists: one who doesn't chase after gallery shows or sales to deep-pocketed collectors. In a 1997 interview with The New York Times in advance of his Whitney Biennial debut, he explained that his low profile had been by choice. Paul Goldberger, the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, wrote that 1997 Times article about Mr. Rose.'He lived a quiet, private life of creative brilliance, in seclusion in the center of the maelstrom of New York.' Aaron Rosenweig was born in 1936, in Manhattan. His wife said that his father, William, had never acknowledged him as his son and that his mother, Rose, was institutionalized at the time of his birth. Aaron was raised in foster homes. He adopted Rose as his last name when he became a professional photographer. His introduction to photography came when a portrait photographer he had met at one of those foster homes hired him as an assistant to hold lights and reflectors. Only in 1997, after some of his photographs were included in the Whitney Biennial did the broader world begin to appreciate his extraordinary body of work. Even after that, though, he didn?t exhibit often. His photographs in Coney Island didn?t see the light of day until 2014, when the Museum of the City of New York exhibited 70 of the pictures in a show called 'In a World of Their Own: Coney Island Photographs 1961-1963. He said 'All around me I saw people who became cynical and bitter when they didn't get the recognition they thought they deserved, and I wanted to be free of that. I wanted only to do my work, for myself, without any commercial influences.' That work consisted not only of taking photographs of the demolition of the old Penn Station in Manhattan, of rooftop scenes in New York, of seashells, of underbrush-- but also of printing his own images, using aged paper and chemicals that he mixed himself. Often the pictures were shot with cameras and lenses that he had made.' You can Google the full article by typing his name and the word photographer. The book begins with a essay by Alfred Corn titled 'The perpetuity of light.' The seven subjects (each with its own section) are Shells, New York City, Milky Way, Reflections, Unterholz, Sun and Clouds, and Sky. That's followed by 'A discussion with Aaron Rose' and then a Chronology. The black covers are exceptionally clean, the white lettering on the spine nicely bright. The cover edges and corners look terrific, no rubbing. The page edges look very clean, no soiling. The book is very solidly bound from cover to cover with nicely tight pages throughout. At the juncture between the rear inside cover and rear end paper you can see some white surface rubbing showing, but the rear cover is tightly bound. The front cover is tightly bound as well. The pages are exceptionally clean. I don't see any soiling. I'm not seeing any creasing. There are no markings. No attachments. And Mr. Rose's signature is the only writing. I've always had the jacket in a fitted protective cover. The jacket looks very clean. I don't see any conspicuous wear, no tears. The flaps are in excellent shape, very clean, no wear. The jacket is NOT price-clipped ($49.50), not clipped at all.

Seller Inventory # 005506

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Aaron Rose: Photographs (Only Signed Copy)
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, New York
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810942240
• ISBN 13: 9780810942240
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Aaron Rose
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Photography
  • Signed Artists
  • One-Of-A-Kind

About this title

Synopsis

“His images invariably give the viewer the sense that he is seeing something as never before—that he is seeing the world not merely reinterpreted but as profoundly rethought.”

—Paul Goldberger, New York Times
Aaron Rose has created one of the most remarkable bodies of work of any photographer living today, and for most of his career he did this in isolation, in a single-minded quest for visual enlightenment. He was virtually unknown to the photography world until five of his prints were exhibited at the 1997 Whitney Biennial, when he was in his late fifties.
Rose’s images—completely original visions of trees and plants; sun, stars, and clouds; shells; the New York City skyline—are miracles of light and chemistry. A magician who builds his own cameras and mixes complex developing solutions incorporating exotic metals, Rose has spent the last 35 years taking and superbly printing more than 25,000 photographs, most of them from negatives that he printed once or twice and then put away forever. This book offers the first-ever presentation of Rose’s work, which has been quietly collected by major museums over the past few years, as well as a vivid portrait of the man himself, speaking to author Alfred Corn about photography, science, art, and commitment.

About the Author

Alfred Corn is a poet, novelist, critic, and adjunct professor of writing at Columbia University in New York. His articles and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, The Nation, ARTnews, and other major publications. A Fellow of the Academy of American Poets and the recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, and Fulbright fellowships, Corn's books include Notes from a Child of Paradise, The Various Light, and All Roads at Once, among others.