STRAND (Paul) - NOURISSIER (François). - Lot 277

STRAND (Paul) - NOURISSIER (François). The Hebrides: Land of Grass on the Leeward Side. Lausanne, La Guilde du Livre, [1962]. Folio, publisher’s illustrated cardboard binding. First French edition of one of Paul Strand’s (1890–1976) most beautiful books, the result of a long stay in the Outer Hebrides, northwest of Scotland. Following his works devoted to New Mexico, France, and Italy, Strand continues here his ambition to create, through photography, a sensitive portrait of a region where the landscape, the inhabitants, and their way of life form an inseparable whole. The remarkable black-and-white heliogravures reveal the windswept shores, peat bogs, villages, fishermen, herders, and children of these isolated islands. True to his aesthetic of extreme rigor, Strand combines documentary precision with monumental forms, transforming the Hebrides into an almost timeless landscape. The original text by François Nourissier, written specifically for this edition, accompanies the photographs without ever commenting on them directly, offering a literary meditation on the solitude, harshness, and poetry of these Atlantic lands. Published by La Guilde du Livre, renowned for the quality of its photographic prints, this volume remains one of the pinnacles of Paul Strand’s bibliography and one of the great works of humanist photography of the 20th century. A fine copy, despite some minor wear on the cover.