David Bailey - Goodbye Baby & Amen: a Saraband for the Sixties - 1969

Verkruis: Copy in very good minus condition, small part of upper edge of DJ missing. Else clean and bright pages inside.

Goodbye Baby and Amen: A Saraband for the Sixties is a landmark 1969 photography book that acts as an elegiac time capsule for the "Swinging Sixties". Created by celebrated British fashion photographer David Bailey and features text by journalist Peter Evans, the book captures the iconic faces of Young London and New York right as the vibrant decade drew to a close.

The book features approximately 140 to 150 stark, dramatic black-and-white studio portraits. Bailey utilized high-contrast lighting, tight cropping, and minimal backgrounds to strip away traditional, rigid class barriers, replacing them with a raw, direct, and youthful aesthetic.

The book categorizes its subjects into a hierarchy of the decade—the original stars, bit players, punters, winners, and "terrible losers".

The subtitle's use of "Saraband" (a slow, stately Spanish dance) sets a distinct mood. The book alternates between celebratory, self-mocking, and portentous, effectively saying a glamorous yet melancholy goodbye to an era that was burning out.

First editions of the book were notoriously expensive to manufacture—printed with deep black inks on large formats—meaning early copies were actually sold at a financial loss.

Hardcover, Folio, Very Good in Very Good jacket, Photography, First american edition. Hard cover in dust jacket. Published NY: Coward-McCann, 1969, first printing. Folio, 11 1/2" x 14 1/2", 237pp., illustrated throughout with b/w photos. Photographs by noted fashion and portrait photographer, David Bailey, text by Peter Evans. Bailey's second book, with over 140 photographic portraits of pop figures of the sixties: artists, writers, fashion designers & models, actors, directors, musicians & pop-stars, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Brigitte Bardot, Twiggy, Julie Christie, Catherine Deneuve, Julie Driscoll, Federico Fellini, Marianne Faithfull, Mia Farrow, Andy Warhol, Bill Brandt, Jane Birkin, Jeanne Moreau, Mary Quant, Michael Caine, Sharon Tate, Penelope Tree, David Frost, Jim Dine. Black cloth with silver titles, purple endpapers.