Flashpoints by Gilles Peress, Portfolio of 12 Signed Silver Prints

This is a rare portfolio of 12 signed silver prints of some of the most famous photographs of Gilles Peress entitled “Flashpoints: Selected Images of Gilles Peress” produced by Double Elephant Editions, New York in 1997. The portfolio has received critical acclaim and has been displayed in numerous exhibitions over the past decade and features photographs from “Telex Iran”, “The Silence” and “Farewell to Bosnia” as well as his most famous photograph, “Bloody Sunday, Derry”. Commenting on the New York exhibition, famed art critic Jung Joon Lee stated, “From Rwanda to Bosnia and Tehran to Belfast, Peress's signature Magnum photographs show dramatic moments of disaster. Three photographs depict the conflicts in Northern Ireland during the 1970s and early 1980s. In Peress's photograph Bottom of William Street One Minute before the British First Parachute Regiment Opened Fire, Killing Thirteen Civilians--an Event Known as Bloody Sunday, Derry, Ireland, 1972, one sees the very moment before tragedy strikes. Frozen in time, we see the panic of the crowd, the heavily armored soldiers among them, and the devastated children. The heightened tension he is able to capture in these dramatic moments conjures up terror, one of the effects of the sublime. The sublime gives beauty to the moment of atrocity and makes the horror digestible for the viewer. In the exhibition's press release, Peress says, "I'm gathering evidence for history, so that we remember." The carefully composed narratives in Peress's photographs do indeed echo his statement by taking on a didactic nature. In presenting us with images of collective suffering, his photographs give us a lesson on humanity's past mistakes.”

The twelve photographs contained in the portfolio are:

Rwandan Hutu Refugees waiting for medical attention, Benaco, Tanzania, 1994

Sick, abandoned, Rwandan Hutu children in a dispensary, Goma, Zaire, 1994

Massacre site, Nyarubuye, Rwanda, 1994

Bosnian muslim refugees from Banja Luca arriving at a dispatching center, Travnik, Bosnia, 1993

Evacuation of the Jews, Skanderiva, Sarajevo, Bosnia, 1993

The beginning of the Krajina War, a church ransacked by the retreating Serb forces, near Knin, Krajina, Croatia, 1995

Women in the courtyard of the main mosque, Quom, Iran, 1979

A pro-Khomeini demonstration in a stadium, Tabriz, Iran, 1979 Posters in front of the US Embassy, Teheran, Iran, 1979

On the Loyalist Shankill Road, Belfast, Ireland, 1981

First snow in Ardoyne, a Nationalist neighborhood, Belfast, Ireland, 1981

Bottom of William Street one minute before the British First Parachute Regiment opened fire, killing thirteen civilians - an event now known as Bloody Sunday, Derry, Ireland, 1972

The photographs measure approximately 13” x 19” and are individually matted with Peress' signature, title and date, in pencil, on the verso and housed in a silver-stamped black clamshell case that also contains a printed title and plate list. Both the clamshell case and photographs are in FINE condition.

Each of the photographs contained in the portfolio as well as the clamshell case and plate list appear in the photo section of the listing.