Various Contemporary Photographers

This extraordinary assortment of books and portfolios represents the complete output to-date of the renowned fine-arts press, 21st Editions.  The Master Collection encompasses a vast array of work by contemporary photographers, rendered in fine photographic prints and photogravure.  In addition to the prints that illustrate the bound volumes are 115 unbound, 'freestanding,' signed photographic prints.  Every aspect of The Master Collection has been crafted by artisans in their respective specialized fields.  The photographs are rendered as hand-pulled photogravures, platinum prints, cyanotypes, gelatin silver prints, and color planographs.  The text is set in letterpress and printed by hand on an old-style Vandercook press.  The fine papers used for both the photographs and text are chosen for their appropriateness to the image and the design of the volume or portfolio.  The elaborate bindings encompass a vast range of materials, from fine fabrics, leather, vellum, and custom-made paper, to exotic woods and metals.  In terms of materials, format, and design, each volume is unique within the set.  21st Editions is distinguished in the world of present-day publishing for the amount of care it takes in the production of its titles, and for the high quality of their materials and craftsmanship, so evident in The Master Collection offered here. 

In addition to the photographers' monographs, The Master Collection also includes the complete run of the lavishly illustrated The Journal of Contemporary Photography (Volumes I through VI), present here in the expanded Museum Edition.  Each Museum Edition volume is accompanied by a portfolio of signed photogravures and planographs by Vik Muniz, Adam Fuss, Christopher Bucklow, Duane Michals, David Levinthal, Kenro Izu, Sandy Skoglund, Keith Carter, and many others.  The Journal of Contemporary Photography is a showcase not only for photographers, but also for the work of critics, writers, and poets, including Pierre Borhan, Michel Tournier, Edmund White, John Wood, Dana Gioia, Richard Wilbur, Edward Albee, Anne W. Tucker, Tom Southall, Annie Dillard, Anne Patchett, Gerard Malanga, and Robert Olen Butler, among many others. 

The monographs, too, pair images with both classic and contemporary texts, as in the volumes devoted to Joel-Peter Witkin's visceral photographic illustrations of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience; Tom Baril's masterful views of New York City with a short story by Ann Beattie; Sheila Metzner's photographic accompaniment to Hart Crane's classic American poem, The Bridge, and the poems of Walt Whitman; Michael Kenna's photographs of Mont-Saint-Michel with text by Henry Adams; Eikoh Hosoe and Charles Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil; Flor Garduño and the sonnets of William Shakespeare; Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison and the poems of Morri Creech, to name just a few.  In Sally Mann, the photographer debuts her own poetry along with a selection of platinum prints of her images.  In 21st's most recent title, The Maxims of Men Disclose Their Hearts: The Journal of Joel-Peter Witkin, 15 platinum prints alternate with reproductions of the photographer's obsessive journal entries. 

The Master Collection includes monographs by the following photographers:

Joel-Peter Witkin (4 volumes)
Michael Kenna
Sheila Metzner (2 volumes)
Eikoh Hosoe
Flor Garduño
Sally Mann
Arthur Tress
Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison (2 volumes)
Tom Baril
John Metoyer
Jamie Baldridge
Greg Gorman
Misha Gordin (2 volumes)
Brigette Carnochan
Josephine Sacabo (2 volumes)
Jefferson Hayman
Vincent Serbin
David Halliday

Volume III of The Journal of Contemporary Photography is devoted to the work of John Dugdale; Volume IV is devoted to Cy DeCosse.  Each of the other volumes of the Journal contains work by a wide number of photographers and artists. 

A detailed list of the titles contained within The Master Collection is available upon request.