Biography

Hardcover. New York, Rizzoli , 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 280 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Valentina was the twentieth century's first American fashion designer celebrity, working and living on equal social footing with the clientele she dressed (Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson, Katharine Hepburn, Millicent Rogers, and Audrey Hepburn, among others). One of the few designers who proved that America could live without the Parisian haute couture, her career is a much needed missing link in the history of American fashion. Beyond merely turning out show-stopping evening gowns, Valentina's exotic beauty, dramatic personality, and incomparable style earned her a legendary reputation. Kohle Yohannan explores the carefully constructed persona and lore of this designer who helped define American Couture. Published in association with the Museum of the City of New York's exhibition Valentina: New York Couture and the Cult of Celebrity, this book includes photographs, never-before-seen personal ephemera, sketches, and original platinum prints from master photographers such as Cecil Beaton, Horst P. Horst, and George Hoyningen-Huene.

Hardcover. US, Rizzoli, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 110 pages, illustrated throughout in color. Light shelf-wear to boards, else a clean, tight copy. Valentino: Master of Couture is an exhibition at the Somerset House co-organized by Valentino himself, who selected over 130 dresses for the exhibition. The book focues as much on Valentino and his glamorous lifestyle as it does on his legendary dressmaking techniques and atelier.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 191 pages illustrated in color and b&w. Profiles the popular musician, tracing his evolution as a singer from his childhood, through his early days as a blues singer with "Them," his solo career, and hits such as "Gloria" and "Moondance." Clean copy.

Hardcover. Taschen, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, In this sumptuous over-sized volume, Taschen celebrates a remarkably candid, confident and exuberantly sexual woman: the Latina porn star Vanessa Del Rio. Presented through Vanessa's own archive, in her own words, is a life at once shocking, titillating, amusing, and inspiring. And because paper and ink can't do justice to a personality this big, an original 140 minute DVD documentary is included. First Trade Edition. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. New York, Taschen, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 416 pages, color illustrated, large format. This catalog raisonne brings together Velazquez's complete works--jaw-dropingly reproduced in extra-large format with a selection of delicious enlarged details--with insightful commentary on how his paintings give equal attention to all that they contain. To him, an old woman frying eggs or a buffoon was as important as a Pope or a King. For him, form was subservient to light and color; the brushstrokes were markers to help the viewers reconstruct each picture mentally--concepts adopted vehemently by the Impressionists. Velazquez's greatest talent was creating beauty from the grotesque, imbuing each subject with a human liveliness rarely seen on canvas. In its extensive detail and comparisons, Jose Lopez-Rey's book reveals the development of this vision. NOTE: DUE TO SIZE AND WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. New York, Devin-Adair Company, 1st, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, 340 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations throughout. Dust jacket priceclipped, has a touch of age-wear. Gilt title on spine. Covers bound in blue cloth. Pages and edges have just a touch of age-yellowing. Book is in beautiful condition for its age.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1st, 1953, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 488 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Light wear to edges. Gilt lettering on spine. Previous owner's name on front fly leaf. Includes signed letter from author to Anna Hartness Beardsley.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Hardcover, 208 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. This lavishly illustrated book establishes the towering influence of the scientist Victor Regnault (1810-1878) in the earliest decades of photography, a period of experimentation ripe with artistic, commercial, and scientific possibility. Regnault has a double significance to the early history of photography, as the first leader of the Societe Francaise de Photographie (S.F.P.) and as the maker of more than two hundred calotype (paper negative) portraits and landscapes. His photographic and scientific careers intersected a third field with his appointment in 1852 as director of the Sevres porcelain works.Readers are treated to Regnault's own beguiling pastoral, garden, and forest scenes; striking portraits of the scientists and artists in his circle of friends; quirky images of acoustic experiments; and an insider's view of the Sevres porcelain works. Regnault's richly varied photographs also encompass perhaps the most extensive group of family portraits in early photography, and his romanticized landscapes reflect a moment when the rural outskirts of Paris were being aggressively suburbanized and industrialized.

Hardcover. New York, Penguin Press, First Edition, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 642 pages. Hardcover. Grey cloth boards with silver titles to spine. Black & white illustrations throughout. Crisp dust jacket with only minor wear. Very clean & unmarked. Crisp, tight copy.

Hardcover. London, Routledge, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 212 pages, b&w illustrations. SIGNED and INSCRIBED by the author with a note by the author laid-in. Light edgewear to dust jacket, faint foxing to top edge. Clean, tight copy. This book discusses the home life of Queen Victoria in the context of her marriage to Prince Albert and her relationships with her children. Whittle describes the purchase, remodeling and rebuilding of Osborne House and Balmoral Castle, a subject often given little attention in other books on the couple's life together.

Hardcover. London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2nd imp., 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 635 pages. Contains black and white illustrated plates, and a pull out family tree. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1st, 1941, Book: Good, 345 pages. Hardcover. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR. Gilt title on spine, faded. Covers have some age wear. Age yellowing to edges and pages.

Hardcover. NY, Penguin Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 642 pages. Gray cloth boards with silver titles to spine. Black & white illustrations throughout. Crisp dust jacket with only minor wear. Very clean & unmarked. Crisp, tight copy.

Hardcover. Columbia OH, Ohio State University Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 368 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to corners. While "freaks" have captivated our imagination since well before the nineteenth century, the Victorians flocked to shows featuring dancing dwarves, bearded ladies, "missing links," and six-legged sheep. Indeed, this period has been described by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson as the epoch of "consolidation" for freakery: an era of social change, enormously popular freak shows, and taxonomic frenzy. Victorian Freaks: The Social Context of Freakery in Britain, edited by Marlene Tromp, turns to that rich nexus, examining the struggle over definitions of "freakery" and the unstable and sometimes conflicting ways in which freakery was understood and deployed. As the first study centralizing British culture, this collection discusses figures as varied as Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man"; Daniel Lambert, "King of the Fat Men"; Julia Pastrana, "The Bear Woman"; and Laloo "The Marvellous Indian Boy" and his embedded, parasitic twin. The Victorian Freaks contributors examine Victorian culture through the lens of freakery, reading the production of the freak against the landscape of capitalist consumption, the medical community, and the politics of empire, sexuality, and art. Collectively, these essays ask how freakery engaged with notions of normalcy and with its Victorian cultural context.

Hardcover. New York, Rizzoli, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Two volume set. Hardcovers with dust jackets. Both in beautifully illustrated slipcase. Minor fraying to slipcase edges. Hardcovers both clean and unmarked. Color illustrations throughout.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 448 pages, b&w photos. In a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Remainder dot on top edge, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Two volume set. 575 pages, 63 b&w illustrations. Latrobe (1764-1820), English-born architect of the United States Capitol under Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, set the course for a vast amount of nineteenth-century American architecture with such works as the Capitol, the Bank of Pennsylvania, and the Baltimore Cathedral. A pioneering engineer as well, he designed the nation"s first comprehensive steam-powered waterworks in Philadelphia. Latrobe combined his professional concerns with an astonishing range of other interests and an acutely ob- servant eye. His papers form one of the finest existing literary and pictorial descriptions of the young republic.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 136 pages, color and b&w illustrations. Elleman examines the artist's early work and investigates the genesis of each of her seven picture books, from Choo Choo (1937) to the epic, carefully researched Life Story (1962, both Houghton) . Very good in a bright dust jacket.

Hardcover. London, Hogarth Press, reprint, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Two hardcover volumes, gray cloth cover with gilt titles on spine. Clean, no dust jackets.

Hardcover. New York, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 408 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Containing uncensored and on-the-spot observations of Picasso at home and in company, Visiting Picasso is a wonderfully vivid, spontaneous and lively record of Roland Penroses many encounters with the artist and his family, friends and associates, from their first meeting in 1936 to the artists death in 1973. Over 70 photographs, many by Penroses wife Lee Miller, illustrate the colorful cast of characters.

Hardcover. NY, Atria Books, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 368 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. The definitive biography that unlocks the remarkable story of Vivian Maier, the nanny who lived secretly as a world-class photographer, featuring nearly 400 of her images, many never seen before, placed for the first time in the context of her life. Vivian Maier, the photographer nanny whose work was famously discovered in a Chicago storage locker, captured the imagination of the world with her masterful images and mysterious life. Before posthumously skyrocketing to global fame, she had so deeply buried her past that even the families she lived with knew little about her. No one could relay where she was born or raised, if she had parents or siblings, if she enjoyed personal relationships, why she took photographs and why she didn't share them with others. Now, in this definitive biography, Ann Marks uses her complete access to Vivian's personal records and archive of 140,000 photographs to reveal the full story of her extraordinary life. Based on meticulous investigative research, Vivian Maier Developed reveals the story of a woman who fled from a family with a hidden history of illegitimacy, bigamy, parental rejection, substance abuse, violence, and mental illness to live life on her own terms. Left with a limited ability to disclose feelings and form relationships, she expressed herself through photography, creating a secret portfolio of pictures teeming with emotion, authenticity, and humanity. With limitless resilience she knocked down every obstacle in her way, determined to improve her lot in life and that of others by tirelessly advocating for the rights of workers, women, African Americans, and Native Americans. No one knew that behind the detached veneer was a profoundly intelligent, empathetic, and inspired woman--a woman so creatively gifted that her body of work would become one of the greatest photographic discoveries of the century.

Softcover. NY, Atria Books, 1st pbk., 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 355 pages, b&w and color illustrations. Vivian Maier, the photographer nanny whose work was famously discovered in a Chicago storage locker, captured the imagination of the world with her masterful images and mysterious life. Before posthumously skyrocketing to global fame, she had so deeply buried her past that even the families she lived with knew little about her. No one could relay where she was born or raised, if she had parents or siblings, if she enjoyed personal relationships, why she took photographs and why she didn't share them with others. Now, in this "thorough, fascinating overview of an artist working for art's sake" (The New York Times), Ann Marks uses her complete access to Vivian's personal records and archive of 140,000 photographs to reveal the full story of her extraordinary life. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. NY, Atria Books, 1st pbk., 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 355 pages, b&w and color illustrations. Vivian Maier, the photographer nanny whose work was famously discovered in a Chicago storage locker, captured the imagination of the world with her masterful images and mysterious life. Before posthumously skyrocketing to global fame, she had so deeply buried her past that even the families she lived with knew little about her. No one could relay where she was born or raised, if she had parents or siblings, if she enjoyed personal relationships, why she took photographs and why she didn't share them with others. Now, in this "thorough, fascinating overview of an artist working for art's sake" (The New York Times), Ann Marks uses her complete access to Vivian's personal records and archive of 140,000 photographs to reveal the full story of her extraordinary life. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, reprint, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 362 pages, 16 pages of b&w illustrations. Who was Vivian Maier? Many people know her as the reclusive Chicago nanny who wandered the city for decades, constantly snapping photographs, which were unseen until they were discovered in a seemingly abandoned storage locker. They revealed her to be an inadvertent master of twentieth-century American street photography. Not long after, the news broke that Maier had recently died and had no surviving relatives. Soon the whole world knew about her preternatural work, shooting her to stardom almost overnight. But, as Pamela Bannos reveals in this meticulous and passionate biography, this story of the nanny savant has blinded us to Maier's true achievements, as well as her intentions. Most important, Bannos argues, Maier was not a nanny who moonlighted as a photographer; she was a photographer who supported herself as a nanny. In Vivian Maier: A Photographer's Life and Afterlife, Bannos contrasts Maier's life with the mythology that strangers-mostly the men who have profited from her work-have created around her absence. Clean, bright copy.