Rare and Unusual Images

March 25, 2012 4:31 PM

recto|verso is a place where the staff of F.A. Bernett Books showcase some of the more spectacular, interesting, unusual and puzzling items they have come across. Discoveries of note include: Both Sides of Broadway, Then and Now, a building-by-building sequential photographic survey of the most famous street in America. The most influential graphic arts publication of late-1920s Tokyo, Gendai Shogyo Bijutsu Zenshu. Felix Vallotton’s Reinvention of the Woodcut, credited by many art historians of his time (and ours) as having modernized and revitalized the form in Western art.

F.A. Bernett Books inventory profile has evolved from its original art-reference focus to feature an increasing number of unique and difficult to source books, periodicals, photographic albums, trade catalogs, artists’ editions, archives, and printed ephemera of interest to scholars and collectors in a variety of fields, including architecture, design, typography, fashion, jewelry, cultural studies, media studies, and history.

posted by netbros (5 comments total)

This guy did what I fantasized about for a long time - traversing the entire length of Manhattan by following Broadway from north to south. It took him a bit under 7 hours - including meal breaks.

You could use such a walk to structure a great "travel" book about this history of Manhattan. I would call it "Broadway the Long Way".
posted by Trurl at 5:03 PM on March 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

Magazines like this are still published. I used to spend an insane amount of money buying MdN Magazine imported from Japan. I think the cover price was like 400Y but I paid about $20 for them. They tended to cover specific topics in design, which is pretty standard for trade magazines like Computer Arts from the UK. But the thing about MdN was that the design demos were years ahead of anything outside Japan. Since I could read Japanese and understand the tutorials, I felt like I was years ahead of other Western designers. I imagine readers of Gendai Shogyo Bijutsu Zenshu felt the same way, they felt years ahead of other Japanese designers.

This is a really interesting time in Japanese art history, late Taisho era when there was a lot of influence from outside Japan and they had a lot of strange mixtures of traditional media with modern styles. A lot of artists traveled outside Japan to bring back Western influences like in this book.
posted by charlie don't surf at 5:58 PM on March 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

Gorgeous. Thank you.
posted by krilli at 8:01 PM on March 25, 2012

“Everything has its Limit! Even Miniskirts…” Aerial propaganda leaflets on the inner German border, 1965-1969. DDR cheesecake and its discontents. Sweet.
posted by Kinbote at 8:48 PM on March 25, 2012

Oh. I didn't know this hadn't been posted before but yes, very worthy link to see on the blue. I've been a follower since they started and my only regret is that they don't post more frequently. But "leave 'em wanting more" is not a bad tenet for a website to adhere to.
posted by peacay at 4:49 AM on March 26, 2012