Inscribed to Her Friend and Sometime Editor
Private View: Inside Baryshnikov's American Ballet Theatre
Publication: New York: Bantam Books, 1988. First Edition.
Notes: A decent but flawed copy of the first edition of this photo-essay about Mikhail Baryshnikov and his years dancing and directing for the American Ballet Theater, inscribed to the photographer's friend and some-time editor, Robert Gottlieb. Arnold was the first woman to join Magnum Photos, the photo agency co-op whose members included Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, among many other important artists.
Gottlieb is best-known for editing Joseph Heller's Catch-22 when he was at Simon and Schuster; he spent most of his career at Knopf, perhaps the most prestigious literary publisher in the US, with a five-year stint as the editor of The New Yorker (which shared ownership with Knopf).
In his memoir, Avid Reader, Gottlieb wrote about Arnold: "... the remarkable photojournalist Eve Arnold...came into our lives in the late 1960s and never departed until severe old age ungenerously robbed her of her amazing vigor and vitality... Eve was tiny, tough, feminine, loving, and wonderful to work with. We saw eye to eye and were hand in hand and cheek by jowl through the half dozen or so books we did together over the years... John Huston deployed her on the sets of many of his films, including The Misfits. [She was] trusted not only by him but by Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and Arthur Miller. But then everybody trusted Eve, from Joan Crawford to Mongolian herdsmen to women in purdah."
This book was published by Bantam Books, now a subsidiary of Random House, as is Knopf, but at the time Private View was published, the two publishing companies were not related.
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing with a numberline ending in 1). A fine copy in a fine dust jacket but for a three-inch slice through the front panel (probably this was the top copy in a carton opened with a box cutter). This copy is inscribed to Robert Gottlieb and his family, ""For the Gottliebs, Whom I love, Eve Thanksgiving 1988."
Provenance: The private library of Robert Gottlieb (1931—2023), sold in part in 2024; supporting paperwork will be provided with the book.
ISBN: 0394578503
Item No: #364149
Price: $150