The first-ever reprint of Henri Cartier-Bresson's influential 1952 book The Decisive Moment , republished in a deluxe slipcased facsimile by Gerhard Steidl of Göttingen, Germany, has finally arrived at TOP after long if understandable delays.
I'll have more to say later, especially about how it compares to the original and whether you need it or not (and I'll deconvolute* the controversy over the reproduction quality for you), but first impressions are favorable.
Amazon appears to be in a near-constant state of "Temporarily Out of Stock," but is taking orders. I'd nab yours soon if you want one—you never know with Steidl what stays in print (or comes back into print) and what soars quickly into unobtanium. For all its prolificacy** and its preeminent importance among the world's photobook publishers c. 2015, it's still a publisher run by one guy and that has only one printing press.
Here's the link to Amazon U.K., where it's in stock and also available for shipping to the U.S., and for Germany and Canada. (I can't link directly to the book at the latter two.) Here's the link directly to the book at The Book Depository, which offers free delivery worldwide and where the book is also in stock.
Mike
*I appear to have coined a word again. Sigh. I do that a lot. Probably, in my mind, a portmanteau of deconstruct and convolute, but c'mon, this really should be a real word. [UPDATE : I should have written "deconvolve," the correct verb form of "deconvolution," which is a term used in mathematics and for a process used in Fourier transforms and other signal processing techniques. Thanks to Matthew Hunt, Arne Croell, and Dave for this. —Mike as Ed.]
**And this is a real word. Go figure.
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Featured Comments from:
jim woodard: "I got mine Tuesday. Opened the box to the most wonderful new book smell, very intense. Still haven't looked through the book though. Kind of like finding an unopened Christmas present now and savoring it!"
Geoff Wittig: "A quick comment about Steidl's Decisive Moment reprint from a bibliophile—the typography of the book is a head-scratcher. The 'new' portions of text such as the foreword are set in Adobe Garamond, a widely used digital interpretation of a classic text typeface dating to the 1600s. As is generally the case in contemporary books, the typesetting is very poor. There is a complete absence of appropriate f-ligatures and lining numerals despite their ready availability in Adobe's digital font, and spacing appears to be the digital default. This is not a criticism of Robert Slimbach's very nicely drawn typeface, but of its slipshod misuse. The facsimile typesetting of the original letterpress text, by comparison, is simply beautiful. Set in a neo-humanist typeface, it includes all the appropriate ligatures, small caps, lining numerals and other accessories. The spacing and page design are impeccable. I can't think of a better example of the degraded status of typography in contemporary trade books."
Mike replies: I thought the same about the original text. Very beautiful.
