ICE: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANTOINE D'AGATA

Marseilles, France: Images En Manoeuvres Editions, 2012. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. As New/No Dust Jacket, As Issued.. Marseilles, France: Images En Manoeuvres Editions, 2012. Hardcover. As New/None, As Issued. First Edition/First Printing. 288 pages. Artist Book. One of the most beautiful art photography books of our time. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now rare. An austerely elegant production by Antoine D'Agata and Andre Frere: Regular-sized volume format. Pictorial hard boards with white titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Photographs by Antoine D'Agata. Text (in French with interruptions in English) by Antoine D'Agata and Rafael Garido. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper in Marseilles, France to the highest standards. The reproduction quality is exemplary in every respect. Without DJ, as issued. Presents Antoine D'Agata's "Ice". Recapitulates and extends "Agonie", his previous album in the same vein. Feverish, non-stop "sex-cum-drug session" photographs that are interspersed with text mostly in French and some English: Emails, excerpts culled from other writers (notably, William T. Vollmann, another sex-cum-drug addiction exemplar) , and most poignantly, the full transcripts of D'Agata's conversations with Ka, his Vietnamese sex partner and lover. "Ice" is, of course, metamphetamine, "crystal meth". "A disturbing testimony, showing the commitment of a photographer documenting drug-generated fictions. In December 2007, Antoine D'Agata arrives in Phnom Penh and falls in love with Ka, a Vietnamese prostitute, and a dealer also. In January 2008, they begin to share a small and dirty flat downtown. Here starts the oblivion. The addiction to methamphetamine takes over the photographic work and the frontiers between fiction and reality start to melt" (Publisher's blurb) . Antoine D'Agata's painterly photographs recall both the agony of Francis Bacon's grossly distorted figures and the delirium of Pierre Molinier's self-portraits. A member of Magnum, D'Agata's evocation of "49% pain/51% pleasure" could not be more worlds apart from the documentary style identified with the agency. "It's not how a photographer looks at the world that is important. It's his intimate relationship with it" (Antoine D'Agata) . An absolute "must-have" title for Antoine D'Agata collectors. This copy is very boldly, elaborately, and beautifully signed, placed, and dated (in the year of publication) in white pen-marker on the front free endpaper by the artist/photographer: "Antoine D'Agata Marseilles 2012". It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. D'Agata's vintage signature is a work of art in and of itself. He NO longer signs recent titles in the same way. This title is a contemporary art photography classic. This is one of few such signed, placed, and publication-year dated copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. A rare signed copy thus. 308 color plates. One of the most brilliant artist/photographers of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER ANTOINE D'AGATA TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 2849952052.