MEXAS - Rare Pristine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Signed by Esko Mannikko - SIGNED ON THE TITLE PAGE

Mannikko, Esko (Photographer); Jaukkuri, Maaretta & Dault, Gary Michael (Contributors)

ISBN 10: 952910703X / ISBN 13: 9789529107032

Published by Gothenburg, Sweden: Hasselblad Center/Esko Mannikko, 1999, 1999

About this Item

1st Printing. Signed. 80 pages. Published in 1999. Collection of color photographs. One of the most important art photography books of our time. The first and only edition. Published in a small and limited print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. An elegant production by Esko Mannikko and Petri Kuokka: Oversize-volume format. Sturdy pale blue pictorial hard boards with photographic reproduction pasted on cover and metallic-silver titles embossed on cover and spine, as issued. Photographs by Esko Mannikko. Essays by Maaretta Jaukkuri and Gary Michael Dault. Printed on pristine-white, thick uncoated stock paper in Finland to the highest standards. Without DJ, as issued. Presents Esko Mannikko's "Mexas". Photographs of Batesville and San Antonio, Texas. All of the American subjects are of Mexican descent. Hence Mannikko's clever conflation, "Mexas". Mannikko's lifelong subject, the decline of agrarian life, of rural Finland, is tenderly mirrored by the decline of rural America in this collection. It is off-putting, even depressing, something people say they do not want in their lives, as if it were ugly or toxic, an accusation that the American writer Annie Proulx had to endure all the way to "Brokeback Mountain". This is ironic because Mannikko's work breathes whereas most contemporary art and photography are lifeless exercises in Mannerist cleverness. Mannikko is a Classicist, a rarity in our shallow "post-modern" art world. It is important to be reminded that in a world saturated and choking with derivative images from glossy magazines, he is The Real Thing, a great artist: His impeccable compositional sense and formalist use of color as well as his aesthetic rigor and faultless eye are not just "world-class". They set Mannikko apart from other living photographers, and make him an artist in a class of his own. Mainstream recognition of his genius is long overdue. An absolute "must-have" title for Esko Mannikko collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed in blue ink-pen on the title page by Esko Mannikko. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a great photography book. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. A rare signed copy thus. 50 color plates. Esko Mannikko's "Naarashauki: The Female Pike" was selected as one of the greatest photography books in "The Photobook". One of the greatest photographers of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER ESKO MANNIKKO TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 952910703X. Seller Inventory # 11287

Bibliographic Details

Title: MEXAS - Rare Pristine Copy of The First ...

Publisher: Gothenburg, Sweden: Hasselblad Center/Esko Mannikko, 1999

Publication Date: 1999

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: As New

Dust Jacket Condition: None, As Issued

Signed: Signed by Author

Edition: 1st Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

From the essay by Maaretta Jaukkuri: "Texas offered Männnikkö visual plenitude and colourful mixtures of cultural traditions, as well as an encounter with the survival strategies that the Mexican population have created around themselves. In San Antonio and its surroundings, he met with a multitude of practices aimed at overcoming the tensions and boredom of daily toil and routine, with ingenious ways of creating possibilities for escaping into other worlds where things would look brighter, more colourful and more joyful. The private universes that we all in different ways create around us are a source of endless wonder and admiration in Männikkö's art. The energy used to create these private 'paradises' seems to be inexhaustible, while also telling us that the search for beauty, harmony and inspiration are an integral part of the human condition...The unblinking clarity of Esko Männikkö's images perforates complex social, cultural and individual life situations. Irrespective of geography and social systems, a kind of pattern of imbalance seems to emerge and repeat itself on the surface of these images. These imbalances seem to exist both in the scenes depicted and in the ways these scenes are looked at in other contexts. They are present both within the world of the images and in the worlds surrounding them when they are seen a artworks. Seen from a little bit closer, the very same imbalances seem to become a source of creativity and of new ways of looking about us."