JOHN GOSSAGE | The Pond - first edition hardcover

1985 first edition of 2000 copies. A book of 49 black & white plates and one triptych gatefold. Silver gelatin print mounted to front board. Essay by Denise Sines.

Dust jacket corners have fraying and short open tears. Dust jacket spine and edges have wear and soilng. Top of spine is slightly bumped, causing minor shallow crease to inside top page corners. Pages and cloth-covered boards are otherwise clean and crisp. Very good ++ book in acceptable jacket. Good overall condition.

Featured in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger's "The Photobook: A History, Volume II" as one of the most influential photography books of the last four decades.

They write that "The Pond" is : "one of the key books to concentrate on a territory that has become highly familiar over the last 25 years: the terrain vague. This is the scrofulous interface between the city and the country, or between the inner and outer city, those uncared for and unkempt pieces of land…:."

"The tone is enigmatic, uncertain, hovering between a celebration of what we can gain even from such disregarded territories, and what they prove we have lost. The view is a forensic one, and we snuffle through the undergrowth like a dog following a scent. There is one wonderful moment of possible redemption, as Gossage points his camera skywards towards the tree tops. It is only a brief apotheosis, however, as is the mythical'pond' to which we journey - no Walden Pond this - and we return to uncertainty and unease, finally ending up in a typically neat suburban enclave. Whether this may be regarded as heaven or hell is left to the Viewer, like much in this disturbing, poetic and deeply ambiguous book, which seems all about transgres sions, aspirations and barriers." (p. 36)

Gerry Badger also writes, "Adams, Shore, Baltz--all the New Topographics photographers made great books, but none are better than "The Pond."

Robert Adams described the work as "believable because it includes evidence of man's darkness of spirit, memorable because of the intense fondness [Gossage] shows for the remains of the natural world."

12 x 11.1 inches