Invisible City

Small 4to (223 x 168 mm), pp.[80]. 60 black-and-white photographs printed in gravure. Original black-and-white photo-illustrated endpapers. Original blue cloth, spine and upper side lettered in blind; one signature starting. Facsimile dust-jacket. Schles has signed this copy and written in black ink to the title page ‘For years I held this copy / and showed it until the dust jacket / disintegrated – I’m sorry – / I had to put – this xerox copy on the cover / But it’s a good book, no? / This is me in my / apartment on Mott / many years ago / LA 2009’.

First edition, Schles’s own copy, signed with an inscription. In a contemporary review Guy Trebay wrote that ‘Schles has an instinct for the vitality of ruins; he understands their texture and their role in dreams… he has also given us a record of the city recognizable not as a movie set or an advertising backdrop, but as a place where humans spend their hopeful, messy lives’ (Village Voice Literary Supplement 4/89).

Auer, M. and M., 802 photo books, p.676.