Traces of the Great War: Forgotten Vestiges from the North Sea to Switzerland

Distributed Art Pub Inc (Dap), 1899-12-30. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. Marval [Published date: 1994]. Hard cover. No other printings listed. Text in English and French. Very good in very good dust jacket. Black boards with gold lettering on spine. Small bump to spine. Light scuffing along edges of covers. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Dust jacket has a 1/2" tear in the middle of the spine and a few other small nicks and tears and light creasing along the edges. Light overall scuffing to jacket as well . Now in an archival Brodart cover. From 1985 to 1993, J. S. Cartier photographed more than 350 sites spread across the entire western front of the Great War, in Belgium, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Picardy, Campagne-Ardennes, Lorraine and Alsace. [From front jacket flap] J.S. Cartier was born in Paris of French parents andhis maternal grandfather was killed in 1915 while serving in the French Army. In 1951, aged 19, he leftfor the United States where he was promptlydrafted in the US Army. Afterwards, he went toOxford where he studied at the Ruskin School ofArt on a GI Bill grant. Returning to New York, hebecame a painter, progressing from AbstractExpressionism to Minimalism.In order to paint, Cartier held several part-time survival jobs such as gas station attendant,housepainter, carpet layer, interpreter, movietheater usher, road mender, messenger boy,department store salesman, postal employee, encyclopedia editor... From 1970 on, Cartier exhibited the work of younger French photographers at the French Cultural services in New York and then turned from painting to photography.After an invitation to Ansel Adams' workshop, Cartier chose to use the 4x5 view camera and beganto carry out several projects including one on the natural landscapes of New York and another on its chaotic aspects. In 1984, he first photographedVerdun's battlefields. Then, working as a team withhis wife Anna, he began in 1990 the large scaleproject which was to record the vanishing vestiges of the Great War in France and in Belgium.J.S. Cartier's photographs have been seen inpublications such as Le Monde, Zoom, Liberation,L 'Express, Life, The New York Times, The LondonTimes, Art in America, American Photographer, etc.His work has often been exhibited and is represented in the permanent collections of theMetropolitan Museum of Art, the BrooklynMuseum, the Bibliotheque Nationale and otherpublic and private collections.Cartier and his wife have recently decided to moveto France near Auxerre. "Why Burgundy?" he was asked. "Because I wonder what a landscape withouttrenches or pillboxes may look like", he said...