Lewis Baltz: The Industrial Trilogy, Signed First Editions

This is a rare set of Lewis Baltz’s critically acclaimed “Industrial Trilogy” consisting of signed first edition, first printings of “The New Industrial Parks near Irvine California”, “Park City”, and “San Quentin Point”. Viewed as a whole, these three books illuminate Baltz’s compelling drive to capture the reality of a sprawling Western ecology gone wild and demonstrate why he considered one of the most influential landscape photographers of the past 50 years. The following are some of the accolades for the trilogy:

Parr & Badger from “The Photobook: A History”: “Recalling the spare aesthetic “of 19th-century photographers of the American West,” the influential New Topography movement, spearheaded by “Lewis Baltz, the group’s intellectual… [has created] an important link between documentary photography and Conceptual art, between art photography and vernacular photography, between American and European photography”….”[The Industrial Trilogy] is immensely influential. Throughout these works, Baltz’s photographs… are exemplary… His objectivity transcends itself, registering a magnified intensity that turns objectivity into an impersonal subjectivity”.

Alice Pratt Brown, Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art: "Baltz's pictures are object-images, physical presences themselves, not representations of things. Although they are signs of real-world objects, they are also independent, archetypal forms. They have an inevitability, an inscrutability, a permanence, even a stateliness. His images demand more than contemplation and delectation: they demand reckoning. Baltz's work exemplifies the ways in which photography, beginning some four decades ago, started to lose the bonds of its isolation within its own segregated history and aesthetics and began to take its place among other media.”

Vince Aletti from, “The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century”: "the most cogent, concise, and rigorous New Topographics documents produced in America….While they explore the cold, anonymous surfaces of the man-made environment, Baltz's images "can't help but establish [their] link to minimalist painting and sculpture, particularly Donald Judd's boxes and Carl Andre's concrete blocks."

The following are the details on the three books:

The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California

First Edition, First Printing published by Leo Castelli/Castelli Graphics, New York in 1974. The total edition was limited to 960 copies. Measuring approximately 11” x 11” and containing 51 full page black and white photographs, the book is bound in grey cloth boards in a photographically illustrated dust jacket. The condition of the book is Near FINE+ with a touch of toning along the top edge of the boards. The condition of the dust jacket is Near FINE+ with some light toning and faint crease to top rear edge and rear flap. The book has been signed and inscribed to Robert Sobieszek by Lewis Baltz on the first free end paper and bears Sobieszek’s stamp on the same page. Robert Sobieszek was the curator of photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and former curator of the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY. Sobieszek was also a prolific scholar and author who wrote 10 books and edited or contributed to 90 others. "He was one of the signally great photography curators of his generation," said Eearl A. "Rusty" Powell, director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, who hired Sobieszek when Powell was LACMA's director. Powell told the Los Angeles Times, "In connoisseurship, collecting and exhibitions, he was at the front of the field." A letter of provenance indicating that the book was purchased from the estate of Robert Sobieszek will be sent with the book.

Park City

First Edition, First Printing published by Artspace Press, Albuquerque & Castelli Graphics, New York in association with Aperture, New York in 1980. The total edition was limited to 3000 copies. Measuring approximately 11” x 11” and containing 102 black and white photographs, the book is bound in light brown cloth boards in a photographically illustrated dust jacket. The condition of the book is FINE and the condition of the dust jacket is Near FINE with some rubbing on the front near the spine and at the corners as well as some light creasing along the top edge. The book is signed and dated by Lewis Baltz in the year of publication on the title page. A letter of provenance indicating that the book was purchased from the estate of Robert Sobieszek will be sent with the book.

San Quentin Point

First Edition, First Printing published by Aperture, New York in 1986. The total edition was limited to 1200 copies. Measuring approximately 11” x 11” and containing 58 black and white photographs, the book is bound in black cloth boards in a photographically illustrated dust jacket with an acetate stamped wrapper. The condition of the book is FINE and the condition of the dust jacket and acetate wrapper is Near FINE with some faint wear and rubbing. The book is inscribed by Lewis Baltz on the title page, "For the Counter Family, with love, LB".

Photographs of each of the books, the signature pages, and some examples of photographs contained in the books appear in the photo section of the listing.