In 2005, Ryerson University was the recipient of an extraordinary gift - the complete black and white print archive of the New York photo agency Black Star. A collection of almost 300,000 photographs chronicling world events and personalities from the First World War to the nineteen-eighties, the archive was, in the words of Collections Curator, Peter Higdon, "the largest gift of cultural property ever made to a Canadian University."
In celebration of this landmark acquisition, Lumiere Press presents highlights of the collection accompanied by the story of the founders of Black Star - Kurt Safranski, Ernest Mayer and Kurt Kornfeld - and their successors Howard and Ben Chapnick - a narrative told against the backdrop of the looming war in Europe, the Great Depression in America and the promise of opportunity in New York.
The edition has been case-bound in oatmeal-colored Asahi Japanese book cloth. The frontispiece image - rendered in a halftone engraving and printed letterpress in gold on black Bugra paper - presents mirror images for the front and back covers.
Publication Date: 2013
Printed in a numbered edition of 300