RIBOUD (Marc). Huang Shan. The Celestial Mountains. - Lot 256

RIBOUD (Marc). Huang Shan. The Celestial Mountains. Paris, Flammarion, 2004. Large folio (approx. 35 × 26 cm), 143 pp., publisher’s black hardcover with a color-illustrated photographic dust jacket. Introduction by François Cheng. Numerous photographs by Marc Riboud, mainly in color, in full-page and double-page spreads. ISBN 2-08-011317-8 (978-2-08-011317-7). A beautiful photography book dedicated to the Huang Shan, China’s “Yellow Mountains,” one of the most iconic landscapes in the Chinese pictorial tradition. Granite peaks rising from the mist, pines with twisted silhouettes, dizzying staircases, and pilgrims come together in a series of images in which Marc Riboud directly juxtaposes photography with the landscapes of Chinese painters and poets. The book thus combines the vision of Marc Riboud, who traveled extensively throughout China and photographed it at length, with an introductory text by François Cheng. Huang Shan is presented less as a simple geographical report than as a landscape that has shaped the Chinese imagination, to the point of raising this question: Is it Chinese painting that has interpreted these mountains, or nature itself that seems to have imitated painting? The 2004 Flammarion edition is a large hardcover volume of 143/144 pages, originally priced at €77, and is now out of print at some bookstores. Condition: a very fine copy. The cover and interior are in excellent condition; the dust jacket is intact and glossy, with only very slight surface marks visible on the photographs. No significant defects apparent.