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JOHN GOSSAGE: THERE AND GONE / ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOUR PHOTOGRAPHS - THE NEAR-UNIQUE DELUXE SIGNED LIMITED BOXED EDITION WITH A SIGNED PHOTOGRAPH
(GOSSAGE, JOHN). Gossage, John & Thomas Weski. Berlin: Nazraeli Press, 1997. First Deluxe Edition. 4to. Cloth in Dust Jacket, Boxed. Photography Monograph. Fine/Fine. 160pp + 16pp, 124 duotone illustrations. Text in English and German. This is the lovely hardbound catalogue published in conjunction with the 1997 John Gossage exhibition entitled "There and Gone" that travelled from Hannover's Sprengel Museum to Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College. It features reproductions of each of the photographs shown, and includes a sixteen page insert containing a transcribed interview between Gossage and curator Thomas Weski. According to Chris Pichler, Nazraeli Press planned to produce a deluxe boxed edition of one hundred and forty-four copies with an ISBN separate from the trade edition - each retailing for nine hundred and fifty dollars and containing a single unique photograph from the one hundred and forty-four images in the book. Ten clamshell boxes were fabricated in Japan, and John Gossage agreed to produce and supply the prints as orders were received. Unfortunately, the first two copies ordered were returned to Nazraeli by the purchasers who objected to Mr. Gossage's insistence on splashing a few drops of coffee on the mat of each of the original prints as an artistic gesture, and the entire project was then scrapped. Only between three and five vintage completed copies of this near-unique edition exist. A most handsome example of the exceedingly uncommon unnumbered deluxe edition BOLDLY SIGNED by John Gossage in black ink on the first preliminary housed in the publisher's debossed and silkscreened black clamshell box, as issued. Laid in is a 4 x 2 ¾" black and white silver gelatin print of a woman's silhouette at the water's edge (reproduced on page 39 of the book) mounted on a 10 x 8" sheet of board SIGNED "John Gossage 1996 / p 39" in pencil on the verso, as issued. It shows the small coffee splash to the board on the recto, which was the intent of the photographer. 3-923922-50-7 Inventory Number: 022704
