RIBOUD (Marc). — Forty Years of Photography in China. - Lot 254

RIBOUD (Marc). — Forty Years of Photography in China. Beijing, China National Art Museum, October 11–20, 1996. Large quarto, soft black cardboard cover illustrated by the publisher, title in French and Chinese on the front cover; numerous black-and-white photographic reproductions, full-page and double-page spreads; texts and captions in French and Chinese. Catalog of the retrospective exhibition dedicated to Marc Riboud in Beijing in October 1996, tracing forty years of photography in China. Riboud, who first discovered China in the 1950s, returned there regularly for several decades, thereby creating an exceptional photographic record of the country’s profound transformations, from the Maoist era to the economic changes of the 1980s and 1990s. The photographer’s official website notes that Robert Delpire compiled this body of work in the 1990s under the title *Forty Years of Photography in China*. The photographs cover, in particular, the 1950s and 1960s, the period of the Cultural Revolution, and then contemporary China: street scenes, demonstrations, workers, peasants, and portraits. The portrait reproduced on the cover is dated Beijing, 1996; the book also contains images taken in Shanghai, Shenyang, Shanxi, and elsewhere. This Chinese catalog should not be confused with the French edition published the same year by Nathan, with a foreword by Jean Daniel: that edition has 176 pages, measures 25 × 31 cm, and has the ISBN 2-09-260941-6. Marc Riboud’s official bibliography and the BnF do list this 1996 Nathan edition. This copy, however, bears references directly to the Beijing exhibition. A fine copy. Very slight signs of wear on the black board cover; the interior is fresh and clean.