The Bread Book

“A monument of the conceptual photobook. . . . It’s the book itself that is the work of art, not the individual images. . . . Like most of the best conceptual photography, the idea is devastatingly simple on the surface, yet infinitely complex when you look beyond the surface.”—Gerry Badger, author of The Photobook: A HistoryIn 1973, renowned conceptual photographer Kenneth Josephson photographed a sliced loaf of bread from one end to the other to create The Bread Book. A deceptively simple object—photographs of the fronts and backs of ten slices of bread, sandwiched between the heels of the loaf with no accompanying text—this artist’s book raises fascinating questions about the nature of photography and its ability to transform an object into an idea or concept, while creating yet another object: the book itself. Reviewing The Bread Book in afterimage, Alex Sweetman proclaimed that “the result of this act of transformation is that the original loaf no longer functions as a loaf of bread, but as a self-contained book considering the ideas of sequence and illusion in relation to the photographic medium.”Originally published in an edition of 1,800 copies, The Bread Book has been out of print and greatly sought after for many years. This new edition is limited to 250 copies, each signed by Kenneth Josephson.