Paul Outerbridge Jr.: Photographs

The first book devoted to Paul Outerbridge Jr., surveying his photographs from the early 1920s to the late 1930s.

Edited by Graham Howe and G. Ray Hawkins, with text by Howe and Jacqueline Markham, it was published by Rizzoli in New York in 1980 in about 160 pages, with a bibliography at the back. The plates fall into two portfolios: platinum prints from 1921 to 1933 and Carbo-Color prints from 1935 to 1939. A reviewer noted that the book gives more room to the platinum work and that the printing cannot fully convey the color of the Carbo-Color originals. Thames and Hudson issued a companion edition in London the same year under the title Paul Outerbridge Jr.: Photographs 1921-39.

Outerbridge (1896-1958) worked in platinum before turning to the Carbo-Color process, a laborious method that a reviewer estimates at about nine hours per print. The text traces his relationship with Cubism, his rivalry with Edward Steichen over commercial subjects, and links between his erotic work and Man Ray's private studies.