Photogravures by Judith Turner
Franz Kafka
Michael Feingold Translator
Vincent FitzGerald & Co., New York, 1990, English
Nonfiction, Photography

Illustrating Kafka's 15 short fictions are 25 photogravures, a delicate process little used since the 19th century. The process, in which original prints are made from a photograph etched by ultraviolet light on an engraved copper plate, is used in an innovative contemporary way to reflect the great Modernist author's distinctive 20th-century sensibility, with its inexplicable fears and haunting sense of helpless isolation. Rather than standing aloof from the text, Turner's images enfold it, combat it, or weave their way across it. Gatefold pages, aquatints adding almost subliminal touches of colors, and collages employing a variety of fine papers in various textures and colors, are among the techniques which add to the effect of a visual environment specially created for Kafka's lost souls to inhabit. Limited edition of 50 copies

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