Sasha Stone - Paris - 1930

SCARCE OPPORTUNITY to purchase this very beautiful, small book with the great photos of the old Paris by Avantgarde artist Sasha Stone.

Sasha Stone was one of the most important photographers of the 'Weimar Republic' and mentioned in the same breath as Edward Steichen, Albert Renger-Patzsch or Man Ray and is prominently represented at important exhibitions such as the Stuttgart ‘Film und Foto’ show. 1930 Klinkhardt & Biermann, a Berlin publishing house that has also published important photobooks by Aenne Biermann and László Moholy-Nagy ('Fototek'), published ‘Paris’, a comparatively modest travel guide that was nevertheless innovative ‘in its accentuation of everyday life in the city’.

Book is mentioned here:
- Hans-Michael Koetzle, 'Eyes on Paris. Paris im Fotobuch. 1890 bis heute' ('Paris in
Photobooks. 1890 until today'), pages 94-95

You visit the SUPER POPULAR SINGLE-SELLER-AUCTION by 5Uhr30.com (Ecki Heuser, Cologne, Germany) - with INTERNATIONAL PHOTOBOOKS from my PRIVATE COLLECTION and from RECENT ACQUISITATIONS.

The term avant-garde is used when an artist takes an innovative and experimental approach to one aspect of their art. The avant-garde in photography takes a critical stance towards existing aesthetic views.
It is important to understand that avant-garde refers to an artistic movement that challenges existing aesthetic norms and seeks new forms of expression.

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Klinkhardt and Biermann, Berlin. 1930. First edition, first printing.

Hardcover. 97 x 155 mm. 224 pages. 16 photos in black and white; 15 by Sasha Stone. Text: Paul Cohen-Portheim. Text in German.

Condition:
Book inside fresh and flawless, clean with no foxing (very often heavily foxed inside), smart, old bookseller sticker at the top left corner of the rear side of the rear cover, no other marks; much better and fresher than usual. Book outside used and stained; teared at the top and at the bottom of the spine. Strong binding. Lacks the super rare jacket by Georg Salter. Overall fine condition.

Scarce photobook by Sasha Stone with the great pictures of the old Paris.

'First and foremost, this is Paul Cohen-Portheim's book.
It is not an illustrated book, but rather a grandiose essay on Paris that brings everything together: love for the city, knowledge of its history, expertise in the evaluation of art and culture, a knowledgeable view of everyday life as well as the museums. Cohen-Portheim goes back a long way, looks into the past, but also devotes himself to the Paris of his time. What is history for us, such as the artistic life around Montparnasse, is the living present for him. This, not least, is the appeal of a prose that can still marvel at women's short hair. For Cohen-Portheim, Sylvia Beach or Adrienne Monnier, James Joyce or Louis Aragon, Picasso or Marc Chagall are not historical greats, but contemporaries. At the Dôme, for example, you can meet Man Ray, Desnos, André Derain or ‘the world-famous Madame Kiki’: luminaries around the corner. Even Kurt Tucholsky appreciated Portheim's book. In the Weltbühne (44/1930), he dedicated an almost hymn-like review to the volume, which was little more than the size of the palm of his hand, finding ‘a wealth of knowledge, expertise and good observations’ in every line and calling the booklet ‘the best Paris guide’ he knew of in German - ‘bravo!’
Not a word about the interspersed photos, 16 in number, including one archive image, the rest by Sasha Stone. Stone, born Aleksander Serge Steinsapir in St. Petersburg in 1895, is considered ‘one of the most important photographers of the Weimar Republic’ - despite a labyrinthine career with stops in Warsaw, New York, Paris, Berlin and Brussels, a comparatively short career in photography and a small oeuvre that has survived?
Originally an electrical engineer, Stone studied fine art in Paris after the First World War (with the help of a scholarship from the US Army). In 1922, he moved to Berlin, attended courses with Alexander Archipenko, became friends with Walter Beniamin and finally - under the influence of Constructivism - decided in favour of photography: a medium in which technology, aesthetics and communication were ideally combined in his eyes. The self-taught photographer quickly became a widely printed interpreter of a drastically changing world. There was hardly a newspaper in the 1920s - from the Ouerschnitt to the Berliner Illustrirte - in which his name could not be found. He is mentioned in the same breath as Steichen, Renger-Patzsch or Man Ray and is prominently represented at important exhibitions such as the Stuttgart ‘Film und Foto’ show. Stone had already illustrated the volume ‘Berlin in Pictures’ published by Adolf Behne in 1929.
One year later, Klinkhardt & Biermann (a Berlin publishing house that has also published important photo books by Aenne Biermann and László Moholy-Nagy, for example) published ‘Paris’, a comparatively modest travel guide that was nevertheless innovative ‘in its accentuation of everyday life in the city’.
Stone follows the pictorial path taken by Cohen-Portheim: only two of the 15 motifs show familiar sights (the Champs-Elysées and the Eiffel Tower). Otherwise, Stone's gaze falls on a cinema or a Seine tugboat, people in a café or the Montparnasse cemetery. Or he devotes himself to cosy corners, as Atget had already explored. The fact that the photographer's name appears on the illustrated dust jacket shows how important Stone's visual contribution was to the publisher. In terms of time, ‘Paris’ marked the end of Stone's photographic career. After 1930, there are hardly any more pictures of him in German magazines. Stone died while fleeing from the Nazis near Perpignan in 1940. A few weeks later and not far away, Walter Benjamin took his own life.'
(Hans-Michael Koetzle)