Form: Horst

Photographs by Horst.

Twin Palm Publishers. California. 1992. First edition. Limited to 5,100 copies, of which this is one of 5,000 casebound copies. Hardback; navy cloth-bound hardback, dust jacket. 144 pages. 72 large format sheet-fed gravures. English. 365 x 290mm. 1.9kg. 944092098. Very good; slight surface wear and marks to white jacket, a few surface scratches, mainly to rear jacket; internally very clean with no inscriptions, jacket now protected in archival plastic.

This book is not about the text (there is little) but is all about Horst's exquisite photographs. It contains seventy-two large sheet-fed gravure plates, printed on rectos only, reproducing some of Horst's most iconic images, as well as some lesser-known and unpublished work. There are several fashion shots (including the iconic Mainbocher Corset, Helen Bennett in Schiaparelli and the 1940 Vogue cover with Lisa Fonssagrives spelling out the title) and a collection of reproductions of Horst's plant still-lifes and close-ups (as featured in his book Patterns from Nature ). Nearly a third of the images are of his male and female nudes. Taken during the 1940s and 1950s these images were ground-breaking, pushing erotic photography into the realm of art. They were to have a strong influence on later photographers including Robert Mapplethorpe and Herb Ritts. The generous size of this book and the quality of the printing does justice to Horst's images, illustrating perfectly his use of light and shadow for dramatic effect.