Sarai Mari; Paul Outerbridge - Speak Easy; Nudi - 1996-2016

1) SPEAK EASY - Sarai Mari

Damiani Editore
Speak Easy is the second monograph by Japanese-born photographer Sarai Mari.
The book explores gender roles, sexuality and the social expectations that shape the way individuals present themselves to the world. Through a series of intimate portraits and nudes of both men and women, Mari looks beyond conventional definitions of gender and identity, seeking moments of vulnerability and unguarded self-expression.
The photographer is interested in the contrast between the public image people construct and the person hidden behind it. In Speak Easy, the body becomes a means of exploring identity, freedom and the pressures imposed by social conventions.
The project is predominantly presented through black-and-white photography, complemented by colour images. Among the subjects featured are Clara Paget, Hikari Mori, Janice Dickinson and Sonoya Mizuno.
The title Speak Easy refers both to the idea of expressing things that are difficult to say openly and to the clandestine bars of the Prohibition era, places where people could speak freely about subjects considered taboo.
Published by Damiani, this first edition is an important example of Sarai Mari's photographic investigation into the relationship between the body, identity and contemporary society.
Copy offered: First edition, hardcover, in excellent condition.

2) NUDI - Paul Outerbridge

Milano, Federico Motta Editore, 1996
Text by Graham Howe
First Italian edition of Nudi, a monograph devoted to the nude photography of Paul Outerbridge (1896–1958), one of the most distinctive figures in 20th-century American photography.
The book presents a selection of 39 photographs, including numerous colour images, illustrating one of the most sophisticated and unconventional aspects of Outerbridge's work.
Outerbridge's photographs are renowned for their remarkable attention to form, composition, colour and texture. His treatment of the human body transforms the nude into a highly constructed visual image, combining modernist aesthetics with sensuality, surrealism and the visual culture of the interwar period.
Particularly important is Outerbridge's pioneering use of colour photography and the carbro-colour process, a technically demanding technique through which he achieved exceptionally rich and luminous colour effects. His experiments with colour placed him among the early major practitioners of artistic colour photography.
The volume includes a critical text by Graham Howe, examining Outerbridge's artistic development and the relationship between his modernist photography and his later, more provocative and experimental work.
Outerbridge's colour nudes were largely unseen during his lifetime and subsequently became an important part of the reassessment of his artistic legacy.
Condition: The book is in good condition, with the interior perfectly preserved and the pages clean and undamaged. The only imperfection concerns the dust jacket, which has a defect on the upper left corner of the front cover, clearly visible in the attached photograph.