Taking My Time- Joel Meyerowitz

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Davec101

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This looks like a really nice set of books. Has anyone had a chance to look at this new limited edition publication priced at £450 ($718)

Publisher's Description

With over 650 pages and featuring nearly 600 images, Taking My Time provides an unprecedented overview and insight into the mind and work of the iconic American photographer Joel Meyerowitz.

Beautifully sequenced and edited with Meyerowitz himself, and including his own personal accounts, this extensive and personal selection charts his complete development as a photographer and creates an unbeatable account of a significant evolution in photography. As an exceptionally diverse and renowned practitioner of his craft, Joel Meyerowitz is best known for pioneering the use of colour photography as an art form, as well as for his witty and subversive ability to capture off-guard moments with humour and affection.

Beginning his photographic career on the bustling streets of New York in the 1960s, Meyerowitz translated the chaos of the city – alive with lights and cars, businessmen and street vendors – into images that are both carefully choreographed and wonderfully accidental. This energy and sense of heightened awareness pervade all of his photographs. It was as an early advocate of colour photography that Meyerowitz has had greatest influence, for he was instrumental in changing the attitude towards the use of colour from one of resistance to nearly universal acceptance. One of photography’s most articulate practitioners, Meyerowitz’s career has taken a highly diverse trajectory, to create a unique, intimate body of work, which explores his own life and artistic journey.

Showing the growth and development of Meyerowitz and his photography, Taking My Time is arranged into discrete bodies of work, split over two volumes, which explore the pivotal points of Meyerowitz’s career as his evolution as an observer of human life as it unfolds. The reader is afforded access to his complete oeuvre, from his formative years in 1960s New York, to his travels around Europe, Cape Cod in the 1970s, St Louis and beyond. Meyerowitz’s experiments in both colour and black and white highlight the studied intricacies of his art as he explores themes of human intimacy, architecture, light and space. In later years his sheer persistence and integrity made Meyerowitz the only photographer granted access to the World Trade Center site and his work serves as an official archive and indispensable tribute, not only to the lives lost, but also to the heroism, compassion and solidarity of those dedicated to the clean up process, aligning the work with Meyerowitz’s continued study of great human affection.

Taking my Time also covers his most recent work in Japan, Tuscany and the Legacy series in the parks of New York City, as well as the never-before-published series 'The Elements'. In 1998, Meyerowitz produced and directed his first film, Pop, an intimate diary of a three-week road trip he made with his son, Sasha, and his father, Hy, who suffered from Alzheimers. It is both an open-eyed look at ageing and a meditation on the significance of memory and is featured in the book - including a DVD of the original film and in a unique insert as a kind of 'graphic novel', along with another special insert for Meyerowitz's lesson in colour versus black and white photography.

The book features a newly-commissioned introduction by leading photography writer Francesco Zanot, charting the development of Meyerowitz's career and setting his work within the broader context of the history of photography.

Uniquely, Meyerowitz himself will contribute short texts to open each section of the book that, in his authoritative and lucid voice, explain the position, relevance and ideas behind the development in his work. Defining images from throughout his career are also investigated with expanded, personal captions written by the photographer. Meyerowitz has always captured moments that would pass other photographers by: noticing the precarious prospects of a child within a crowd, the inadvertent positioning of strangers beside one another and the macabre connotations of a mattress trussed up on a car roof.

While Meyerowitz photographs the everyday there’s often a note of chaos or surprise in his images – in the way a Parisian man lies sprawled over the pavement while another steps nonchalantly over him, the manner in which a ball of fire hovers over inexpressive passers-by and the absurdly-dressed posturing of his fellow holiday-makers in Cape Cod.

The back of the book will include an index and comprehensive chronology and bibliography of Meyerowitz, including books, shows and awards.

Publisher: Phaidon

Size: 340 x 240 mm

688 pages, 400 colour photographs, 180 black and white photographs
 

benjiboy

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Amazon U.K are currently selling this book for around £500, ( $795 ) I would be interested to know if the O.P has bought one, because I would certainly have to "take my time" thinking about on spending this amount of my children's inheritance on this work.
 

BrianShaw

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I'm sure it is fascinating, but I'll be waiting for a local library to acquire it before I'll see it.

... and I really like Meyerowitz' work.
 

pentaxuser

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I'm sure it is fascinating, but I'll be waiting for a local library to acquire it before I'll see it.

... /QUOTE]

Local authority money is tight in the U.K. However someone did have the bravery to suggest to our local library that it spend this much on one book. He hasn't been seen for a while........:D

pentaxuser
 
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Davec101

Davec101

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Amazon U.K are currently selling this book for around £500, ( $795 ) I would be interested to know if the O.P has bought one, because I would certainly have to "take my time" thinking about on spending this amount of my children's inheritance on this work.

Have not purchased it yet, I have seen it being sold for as low as $462 (£291) in the U.S, would be cheaper to get it shipped from there to the U.K and pay the import duty.
 

benjiboy

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I admire Mr. Meyerowitz's work, but I'm retired and would think it more sensible to use this kind of money on trying to pay my winter utility bills.
 

benjiboy

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Have not purchased it yet, I have seen it being sold for as low as $462 (£291) in the U.S, would be cheaper to get it shipped from there to the U.K and pay the import duty.
The whole idea of customs duty is to ensure you can't import goods as an individual cheaper than you can buy it here, because if that was the case retailers here would never sell anything.
On £291 once you have paid the price of the books, shipping cost customs duty,Royal Mail handling charge then 20% V.A.T.on the sum total of the charges how much cheaper will it be ?
 
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Davec101

Davec101

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The whole idea of customs duty is to ensure you can't import goods as an individual cheaper than you can buy it here, because if that was the case retailers here would never sell anything.
On £291 once you have paid the price of the books, shipping cost customs duty,Royal Mail handling charge then 20% V.A.T.on the sum total of the charges how much cheaper will it be ?


These would be approximates

Shipping £35
RM handling charge £12
Vat = £58
Total £75

£291 +75
Grand Total £366
 

benjiboy

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These would be approximates

Shipping £35
RM handling charge £12
Vat = £58
Total £75

£291 +75
Grand Total £366
What about the customs duty you left out, and the calculation should be thus

Cost of books +
Shipping cost +
customs duty +
R.M. handling charge+
-----------------------
Total -----------
-----------------------
Plus V.A.T. @20% on the above total

I know it's crazy but HMRC charge a duty on a duty.
 

coigach

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benjiboy

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On further reflection I not only can't afford these books, but also in the current economic climate I don't know anybody who can.
 

pentaxuser

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As for getting the local library here in the UK to buy it, you'll be lucky:

Yes even in the "good times" the price quoted would make other non photographic users unlucky as well if the library were to pay that kind of price for one book.

pentaxuser
 

Shawn Rahman

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I called Phaidon some time earlier this year, and they confirmed that an edition for the masses (smaller in physical size but complete) will be released some time in 2013. This book was originally planned as a regular release before Phaidon pulled it and made it a limited, collectors thing at this exhorbitant price. I remember the original Amazon listing, and I think the price was around $125-$150. Then the decision was made to make it a larger, limited run, with the crazy price increase.
 
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The "limited edition" artist book is more frequently the standard now. I don't see a problem with it necessarily since print prices have gone way up in the last few years. There is a big gap between a $50 book and a $5000 print. The limited edition books fill that gap. It also helps the publisher make money, which is a good thing.
 

batwister

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Is this an ad? Very much a collectors item for devotees of the photographer - and I'd guess of more interest to academically oriented aesthetes, non-photographers.
I'm sure most here would more likely buy several individual monographs, if that kind of cash was lying around.

My hypothetical Christmas list in that respect:

1. Mark Power - 26 Different Endings (£40)
2. Jem Southam - The River Winter (£40)
3. Viviane Sassen - Parasomnia (£25)
4. Paul Strand - Un Paese: Portrait of an Italian Village (£40)
5. Walker Evans - American Photographs (£20)
6. Seduced By Art: Photography Past and Present (£30)
7. Mark Steinmetz - South Central (£140)
8. Eliot Porter - In the Realm of Nature (£30)
9. Sense of Place: European Landscape Photography (£30)
10. Darren Almond - Nocturne (£45)

Total = £440

Some of those books are also destined to become classics, the Steinmetz and Sassen in particular would be a worthwhile investment, the Paul Strand book is a rarity.
 
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Davec101

Davec101

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Is this an ad? Very much a collectors item for devotees of the photographer - and I'd guess of more interest to academically oriented aesthetes, non-photographers.
I'm sure most here would more likely buy several individual monographs, if that kind of cash was lying around.

My hypothetical Christmas list in that respect:

1. Mark Power - 26 Different Endings (£40)
2. Jem Southam - The River Winter (£40)
3. Viviane Sassen - Parasomnia (£25)
4. Paul Strand - Un Paese: Portrait of an Italian Village (£40)
5. Walker Evans - American Photographs (£20)
6. Seduced By Art: Photography Past and Present (£30)
7. Mark Steinmetz - South Central (£140)
8. Eliot Porter - In the Realm of Nature (£30)
9. Sense of Place: European Landscape Photography (£30)
10. Darren Almond - Nocturne (£45)

Total = £440

Some of those books are also destined to become classics, the Steinmetz and Sassen in particular would be a worthwhile investment, the Paul Strand book is a rarity.

The OP was not an ad, i agree that you can buy many great books for that price however I am a bibliophile and do like to own quite special books with original prints. I wrote an article a few years ago about original print photobooks, if you read it you will see why I am passionate about books with high production values. Those interested can download a copy here
 
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benjiboy

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For the price the're charging Meyorowitz can afford to "Take His Time".
 
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