Nothing Personal, Avedon & James Baldwin, $150
Richard Avedon, one of the world’s most famous photographers of his time, and James Baldwin, best-selling novelist and essayist on the American civil rights movement, collaborated on Nothing Personal, a book about the state of life in America. The set is a large format, slipcased collector’s book with 160 pages containing a four-part essay written expressly for the book by Baldwin and 54 photographic portraits taken by Avedon between 1954 and 1964. The book was designed by Harper’s Bazaar art director, Marvin Israel, a close colleague and collaborator of Avedon. An accompanying 72-page booklet, The Way We Live Now, features an essay by Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Hilton Als along with many of Avedon’s unpublished correspondence, preliminary layouts, and B&W outtakes displaying Avedon’s colored mark-ups.
