PASTIMES: PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATTHEW GODDARD-JONES - Rare Fine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Signed by Matthew Goddard-Jones - ONLY COPY ONLINE

1st Printing. Signed. Unpaginated. Published in 1995. Collection of black-and-white photographs. One of the most beautiful art photography books on Australia ever published in our time. The first and only edition. Published in a small and limited print run as a hardcover original only. There is no ISBN. The First Edition is now rare. A brilliant production by Matthew Goddard-Jones: Oversize-volume format. Pictorial hard boards with titles on the spine, as issued. Photographs by Matthew Goddard-Jones. Except for the witty fragment by Barry Humphries, there is no text. Printed on pristine-white, thick uncoated stock paper in Australia to the highest standards. The reproduction quality is exemplary in every respect. Without DJ, as issued. Presents Matthew Goddard-Jones' "Pastimes: Photographs". The Good Life, inimitably Australian-style. Every photograph shows Australians engaged in physical activity or sport of some sort (mainly, swimming), in the great outdoors, often mostly semi-naked. This is the iconic imagery we have of the great continent, and Goddard-Jones celebrates it with joy, panache, and a brilliant eye. Marshall McLuhan once said that "past times" become the "pastimes" of the present: We engage in play and sport to relive the values of the past that still sustain us; an idea of the Past, even if long gone, is our coping mechanism and basis for understanding the bewildering Present through recreation, or as McLuhan preferred to call it, "re-creation". Australians seem to understand this better and more intuitively than their neurotic Western counterparts. "Australia is an outdoor country. People only go inside to use the toilet. And that's only a recent development" (Barry Humphries). An absolute "must-have" title for Matthew Goddard-Jones collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Matthew Goddard-Jones. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a contemporary art photography classic. As far as we know, this is the 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 black-and-white plates. One of the most brilliant photographers of our time. A fine copy. …