Lot 121: WINGATE PAINE

WINGATE PAINE
The Mirror of Venus. Text by Françoise Sagan and Federico Fellini. New York: Random House, 1966.

112 black and white photographs, some of these double-page, 7 color photographs. Original black and white boards, spine and front cover lettered in gilt, purple endpapers; original dust-jacket (short tear and light wear on the back panel); cloth slipcase. Provenance: Edmund Shoshoney (inscription from Paine; the signature of each model on the page facing her first photograph).

Gelatin silver print (220 x 250 mm), stamp of the Wingate Paine archive and penciled '2' on the verso. Laid-into a cloth box with a copy, in dust-jacket, of the 1972 Simon and Schuster edition.

FIRST EDITION. PRESENTATION COPY SIGNED BY CARLA, SCARLET AND SANDRA -- THE BOOK'S LEAD MODELS -- AND INSCRIBED BY THE PHOTOGRAPHER: "To Edmund Shoshoney, a fellow connoisseur of beautiful things... Wingate Paine". WITH A GELATIN SILVER PRINT OF THE IMAGE USED FOR THE DUST-JACKET of the Simon and Schuster edition of 1972; the first edition dust-jacket shows text only. Paine's book proved to be a run-away hit, with 150,000 copies in circulation by the time this edition was published. The Open Book, 224-25. (3)