Melnick, Philip. Nineteen Seventies California by Philip Melnick. Signed and numbered.

Nazraeli Press, 2015.  Hardcover, slipcased, 12 x 15 inches, 48 pages, 31 duotone plates. Signed by Melnick on a slip on back cover. Limited edition of 350 copies of which this one is #161/350.  As new. Publisher's description: Signed on card pasted to back of book. Publisher: Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1935, Philip Melnick grew up in Los Angeles, where he attended the University of California. In the 1970s, shooting with a medium format camera, Melnick made black-and-white photographs of his surroundings, exploring the unique sense of style found in the Southern California urban landscape. Nineteen Seventies California offers a beautifully presented selection of Melnick’s most striking work from this period, in which he displays a keen eye for the character of its vernacular architecture and the distinctive look of its streets: the quirky confluence of a single parked car with a street facing wall and a fragmented apartment building; the intersection of street, fence and another nondescript apartment house. He isolates the intricate pattern of a wall, creating arresting fusions of everyday sights and geometric abstraction. “Melnick’s images emphasize a push-pull, hard-soft tension that give his pictures distinguished style and great beauty,” wrote the late Fred McDarrah, who was himself a photographer for The Village Voice, as well as a writer, during the years that this series was produced. Philip Melnick’s work has been widely exhibited and written about; his photographs are included in the permanent collections of numerous important institutions, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Bibliothèque National, Paris.”   This book was also issued as part of an NZ Library set but also sold separately.