Solomon's Temple: The European Building-Crafts Legacy - Photographs by Laura Volkerding (Non-mint)

Hardcover | 29.21 x 1.91 x 31.75 cm | 131 pp

University of Arizona | 1996 | 9780938262305

Laura Volkerding crisscrossed France to photograph the wood, stone, and metal artefacts of a tradition that, legend has it, dates back to the construction of Solomon's Temple. In the luminous duotone images reproduced in this book, Volkerding explores the workshops, tools, and projects of an elite group of artisan-craftsmen, most of them members of the Compagnons du Devoir. She extended her coverage by photographing similar workshops in Spain, Greece, Italy, Tunisia, Canada, and the United States.

Using a large-format view camera for the textural detail it reveals, she stands back from her subjects and allows the objects within the mostly unpeopled working spaces to reveal themselves through the natural light falling on them.

Volkerding's meticulously composed images are meditations on the atmosphere of the workshops, concentrating on the arrangement of tools within them, on fragments of works in progress, and on ageing reference drawings pinned to their walls. These photographs evoke a timeless serenity, yet they contain an undercurrent of surrealism arising from the artist's distinctive vision and the modern world's impact on the arcane secrets of an ancient tradition.

PLEASE NOTE: This book is a NON-MINT item. NON-MINT books are new but are either ex-display copies or warehouse marked - minor cosmetic imperfections such as scuffs, marks, or minor dents to the covers.