FAZAL SHEIKH: LADLI

Gottingen, Germany: Gerhard Steidl Druckerei Und Verlag, 2007. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. As New/As New Dust Jacket.. Gottingen, Germany: Gerhard Steidl Druckerei Und Verlag, 2007. Hardcover. As New/As New. First Edition/First Printing. 140 pages. Collection of photographs. One of the most important 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 scarce. An austerely elegant production by Fazal Sheikh and Gerhard Steidl: Oversize-volume format. The book weighs 3 pounds. Khaki cloth boards with maroon titles embossed on spine, as issued. Photographs and text by Fazal Sheikh. Printed on pristine-white, thick uncoated stock paper in Gottingen, Germany to the highest standards. The reproduction quality is exemplary in every respect. In pictorial DJ with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Presents Fazal Sheikh's "Ladli". His second portrait of India, a country of beauty and pain, its people, especially its women, blessed and cursed at the same time. "In India it costs a poor family 50 rupees to hire a midwife to oversee the birth of a child. For an additional 10 rupees, the parents are assured that the birth of a girl will be met with an act of infanticide by the midwife. The alternative for many is an institution like the Delhi orphanage, in which Fazal Sheikh's work on the predicament of the girl-child in India begins, and 99 percent of that orphanage's population are girls. Ladli follows on the heels of Sheikh's 'Moksha', which documented the plight of the Indian widow, and for which, in combination with this companion volume, the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson granted Sheikh its Henri Cartier-Bresson (HCB) Award in 2005" (Publisher's blurb). "At once descriptive and loving, and warm rather than cool, the photographs are extraordinarily moving portraits in the classic mode (think Julia Margaret Cameron and Irving Penn), whose aesthetic weight is multiplied by the power of their maker's concern" (The New Yorker Magazine). An absolute "must-have" title for Fazal Sheikh collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Fazal Sheikh. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a contemporary photography classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. A scarce signed copy thus. 95 tritone plates. Winner of the MacArthur Genius Grant in 2005. One of the most brilliant photographers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER FAZAL SHEIKH TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 3865213812.