The Online Photographer

The wolf we've been crying about

I've been monitoring this one closely, and I can't tell you how many times I've put up a post like this only to yank it again, as yet another false alarm. Apparently the issue was that Pentti wanted to supervise the press run but either had health troubles, or family health troubles, or had too many commitments. At any rate he couldn't do it, so the second edition got postponed and postponed again and again.

However, I have it on good authority (from Dewi of Dewi Lewis Publishing himself)—it's on. Apparently the press run has been done and the books were in Dewi Lewis Publishing's warehouses as of mid-August.

The second edition of Here Far Away, the beautifully printed lifetime retrospective of Finnish photographer Pentti Sammallahti, TOP's Book of the Year for 2012, is now available to order for later shipment from Amazon.com (U.S.) (although they're not calling it a pre-order), and copies can be ordered from The Book Depository, too (with free shipping worldwide). Although (frustratingly!) you can't pre-order the book in the U.K. yet, the U.K. will be the first ones to actually get books to ship—the press release says the book will start shipping in the U.K. on Monday and that Amazon in the U.S. will get copies in mid-October.

If there are any left by then. As ever, one never knows with photo books. The lovely little Steidl book Saul Leiter: Early Color went through this same long and very uncertain interval between the first and second editions, and was scarce as hens teeth and got very expensive as the limited supply got fought over—and now it's still available new and has been easy as 1-2-3 to get for several years now.

So you just never know how this is going to go. The anxiously awaited Second Edition of Here Far Away could sell out pronto and never be reprinted, or the book could stay in print from now on for an easy tenure. The first edition sold out in record time, only a few weeks. Presumably that means they printed more on the second go-round. That I don't know.

At any rate, our "Book of the Year" is meant to say, in effect, "If you only buy one book this year...." So it should go without saying that this is one we think you shouldn't miss. Harrowing as the task may be to actually get your very own copy into your hot little hands.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Olli Thomson: "Delighted to see this back in print. I was lucky enough to get my hands on one from the first run.

"I think it's a real shame that so many photobooks have such small print runs. I understand that these are never going to high volume books but in the era of print on demand you would think it would be possible to continue to make them available.

"I understand too that limited print run plus high quality production standards equals high prices, but I do suspect that some publishers take advantage to push the prices even higher—beyond the budget of some of us.

"I still recall how excited I was when I first came across Bert Teunissen's work Domestic Landscapes and how disappointed I was to discover that the book/s had long sold out and cost hundreds of dollars from specialist shops."