The Book of Shadows

An album of 88 anonymous twentieth-century photographs gathered around one accidental subject: the photographer's own shadow falling across the picture.

The San Francisco gallerist Jeffrey Fraenkel chose the images from a private collection of more than 2,000 prints and edited the volume, which accompanied a Fraenkel Gallery exhibition of the same name in May to August 2007. His introduction argues that the shadow confirms someone stood behind the camera, a fact photographs rarely admit. The book also reprints "The Man Who Lost His Shadow," an 1813 short story by Louis Adelbert von Chamisso. Katy Homans designed it, Trifolio in Verona, Italy, printed the 88 duotone plates, and the hardcover is bound in suede.

Fraenkel Gallery announced that the original prints would go on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2008. Besides the trade hardcover, the gallery issued a numbered special edition in a red cloth slipcase that includes a unique anonymous photograph. Both are out of print.