This is a black cloth-wrapped vintage coffee table hardcover featuring selected black and white images from some of the pre-eminate female photographers of the 20th century. Published by Viking in 1979, edited by Margaretta K. Mitchell, 206 page, including biographical notes.
First edition, signed by Ms. Mitchell to Robert Murdock, thanking him for his help for the opening of the gallery show that accompanied the book. Also signed by Barbara Morgan (one of the artists featured in the content). This is a very good or better volume, with no significant flaws. Black cloth on boards shows some light sunning along edges. Matching vintage dust wrapper has a large loss at the back upper edge, and some smaller losses along edges. Surface rubbing in places front and back. Now protected in a removable archival mylar sleeve for proper presentation. See the accompanying images for full condition details. Will ship promptly, carefully packaged, with tracking. Margaretta K. Mitchell – A Concise Biography: Margaretta K. Mitchell (née Kuhlthau; born May 27 1935 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American photographer, writer, and educator whose career has spanned more than six decades. After graduating magna cum laude from Smith College in 1957, she worked as a research assistant to Edwin Land, the inventor of the Polaroid instant camera, until 1959. This early exposure to cutting‑edge photographic technology helped shape her lifelong interest in the medium’s technical and aesthetic possibilities. Mitchell’s photographic oeuvre is rooted in the Pictorialist tradition, emphasizing formal qualities of line, shadow, and composition—particularly in black‑and‑white portraiture and still‑life studies. Over the years she has incorporated graphic media into her images of flowers, expanding her visual vocabulary. Her work belongs to major public collections, including the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the International Center of Photography (ICP), the Akron Art Museum, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Beyond creating images, Mitchell has been a prolific author and curator. In the late 1970s she organized the traveling exhibition “Recollections: Ten Women of Photography,” which highlighted the contributions of pioneering women photographers such as Berenice Abbott, Ruth Bernhard, and Lotte Jacobi—an effort that helped restore their place in photographic history. Her publications include: “To a Cabin” (1973), co‑authored with Dorothea Lange, a lyrical account of rural life; “Gift of Place” (1969), a meditation on landscape and memory; A biography of Ruth Bernhard (2000); and “The Face of Poetry” (2005), exploring the intersection of visual art and verse. Throughout her career Mitchell has taught photography, written extensively for Popular Photography magazine, and continued to exhibit and publish, cementing her reputation as a vital chronicler of both the medium’s history and its contemporary practice.