The Girl and The Guardsman (original "Cimemamatograph" illustrated edition)
New York: Scribners, 1900. First edition. Hardcover. First edition. Red cloth lettered and decorated in black with two gilt-edges oval photographs of the title characters tipped onto the front cover. Illustrated with 25 of the author's "cinematograph" photos (about which more below). Top edge gilt. Illustrated endpapers. 212 pp. A tight, near fine example, gilt bright, faint rippling to the rear cloth. Alexander Black was an American photographer and writer and lecturer, during the 1890s, on photographic techniques and subjects. His lectures were illustrated with slides, most of which were made by him, and by 1894 he began to develop the idea of using a screen narrative for presentations of fiction and non-fiction subjects. He employed stop-action to photograph actors to illustrate the narrative and exhibited the results to the general public (though not to vaudeville audiences which he felt were not sophisticated enough to appreciate the format). He produced his works during the same time that Edison's Vitascope was debuting which, producing the earliest continuous action silent films, eclipsed Black's techniques. Black wrote and produced three "picture plays" in the late 1890s, the last of which was this title, "The Girl and The Guardsman" (in 1899). An important milestone in both photographic and cinema history. Near Fine. Item #E15451B
Price: $75.00