More Information
Author Carel Blazer
Pages 130
Signed No
Publisher Bruynzeel
Publishing date 1947
Publishing place Rotterdam
Language Dutch
Edition first edition
Binding Hardcover without dustjacket (as issued)
Book condition Collectible; Very Good
Condition description Some toning to endpapers, else fine. Cover is in very good condition; small bump upper right corner of cover, no discoloration to covers.
Cover condition Fine
Dimensions (cm hxb) 24 x 32
Cited in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook: A History, Volume II. (London and New York: Phaidon, 2006).] "Almost as much as the Soviet propaganda books of the 1930s, postwar Dutch photobooks were total products. That is to say, the photographers were often just part of a larger team that included writers and graphic designers, with no single element having prominence over another....This was particularly true of company books in the 1950s and 1960s, but the trend was apparent even by the late 1940s, as seen in this fine early example of the way Dutch graphic designers eagerly grasped the opportunities that had been cut short by World War II. The photographer for 50 Jaar Bruynzeel was Carel Blazer, a leading light in the 'Underground Camera' and the radical GKf Group of documentary photographers. As such, and as a member of the Dutch Communist Party, his involvement in the production of a commercial company book may seem contradictory, but apart from the obvious reason of making a living, reconstruction was the main priority in postwar Holland, and as Bruynzeel was a timber and building products company, commerce and communism had overriding motives in common. Blazer's pictures are stolidly conventional in any case; the book's radicalism lies in its design, and the way in which the images are incorporated into the total graphic package....As is typical of many company books of the period, [this book's] ideological message presents man and machine as two aspects of a single entity. The complicated services and communications systems of the factory are compared to the human body with its arterial and neurological systems. In a famous double-page spread, ducting and pipes look like arteries or nerves, either feeding or cleaning the body corporate." (Martin Parr & Gerry Badger)

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50 Jaar Bruynzeel 1897 - 1947

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Very important Dutch corporate photobook. Gray paper-covered boards with "50" debossed on cover and "Bruynzeel" stamped in gold on cover and cloth-covered spine. Photographs by Carel Blazer. Text (in Dutch) by Martin Redeke. Designed by Jan Bons and Jaap Penraat. First edition. Very nice copy of this important book. Parr/ Badger, The Photobook II, p.187.
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