Nell Dorr - Of Night and Day - 1968

Dorr created the book as a highly personal artistic response to the Vietnam War. True to her belief that culture already had an abundance of documented terror and misery, she chose to counter that darkness by capturing beauty, emotional reverence, and a dreamy atmosphere of reminiscence.

The core of the book consists of a careful sequencing of Dorr’s black-and-white photogravure plates juxtaposed with thoughtfully selected lines of poetry, prose, and philosophical aphorisms.

Dorr matches her imagery with excerpts from famous world thinkers, poets, and leaders, including Goethe, Plotinus, Abraham Lincoln, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lao-tze, William Wordsworth, Dag Hammarskjöld, Emily Dickinson, Sappho, Henry David Thoreau, and Lucretius.

The photography features an interplay of light and shadow reflecting the thematic essence of "night and day". The images lean toward semi-abstract, portrait, and landscape photography rather than standard documentary records, using high-quality mid-century printing techniques to evoke a "mystical" and deeply introspective reader experience.

The book measures roughly 11 x 9 inches and stands alongside her other major historical photo-essays, such as Mother and Child (1954) and The Bare Feet (1962), cementing her legacy as a master of intimate visual storytelling.

Copy and dustjacket in very good-. Some discoloring to DJ and wear to edges, but complete.