OBSERVATIONS: Photographs by Richard Avedon, Comments by Truman Capote

Simon and Schuster, 1959, First edition, 151 pp., 11" X 15", Hardcover in slipcase

Very good (please see photos)

This early Avedon book presents the photographer’s striking portraits from the 1940s and ’50s of luminaries such as Marian Anderson, Louis Armstrong, Brigitte Bardot, Truman Capote, Gabrielle Chanel, Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Cousteau, Marcel Duchamp, Alfred Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe, Marianne Moore, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Pablo Picasso, and Gloria Vanderbilt, among others. It also features an extended selection of images of postwar Italy taken between 1946 and 1948, a profile of Avedon by Truman Capote, and literary sketches of the portrait subjects by the novelist. Beautifully printed in rich black and white, the book was designed by longtime Harper’s Bazaar art director Alexey Brodovitch.