CITY OF SECRETS: PHOTOGRAPHS OF NAPLES BY JED FIELDING - Rare Fine Association Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Double-Signed, Dated, And Inscribed by Jed Fielding

1st Printing. Signed. 124 pages. Published in 1997. Retrospective collection of photographs. Jed Fielding's brilliant and moving debut. 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 Jed Fielding and MCA: Oversize-volume format. Maroon cloth boards with black titles embossed on cover and spine, as issued. Photographs by Jed Fielding. Text by Denise Miller, Nan Richardson, and the great novelist Shirley Hazzard. Separations by Robert Hennessey. Printed on pristine-white, glossy stock paper by Meridian Printing Rhode Island in the United States to the highest standards. The reproduction quality is exemplary in every respect. In pictorial DJ with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Published on the occasion of the landmark exhibition of the same name held at The Museum of Contemporary Photography Columbia College Chicago from November, 1997 through January, 1998. Presents Jed Fielding's "City of Secrets". Black-and-white photographs, made over a period of twenty years, of Naples, a city that became a personal obsession for the artist. Her citizens, from kids in diapers to weathered old men, loom into the frame like characters out of Fellini, bursting with antic, earthy energy. Fielding confronts and embraces his expressive subjects, building up a portrait of a place that is as visceral as it is cinematic, a true theater of the streets. All of Fielding's images seem to have stories behind them. The possibility that the stories might reveal themselves makes these portraits of a fabled city irresistible. A student of Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, Fielding has mastered the subtleties of focal point and rim. "His extraordinary images constitute a major body of work by an important new voice" (Publishers Weekly). Nan Richardson's essay is insightful. Shirley Hazzard provides a historic and poetic context for Fielding's work. Still: The photographs speak for themselves and must stand on their own. "I loved it and dreaded it and just kept going back" (Jed Fielding). An absolute "must-have" title for Jed Fielding collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed, dated, and inscribed in black pen-marker on the half-title page by the photographer: "For Paul, with affection and gratitude, Jed 2/03". He then added his formal signature underneath. It is double-signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. The recipient, Paul Berlanga, who is named, is the Chicago-based photography expert and important artist/painter. This title is a contemporary art photography classic. As far as we know, this is the only such double-signed, dated, and inscribed 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. 79 plates. One of the most brilliant American photographers of our time. A fine copy. ISBN 0965888703.…