• Cover Cover of Ralph Gibson, Deja-Vu, Lustrum Press, New York, 1973, showing the title in white italic serif type centred on a solid black softcover.
  • Reverse of Ralph Gibson, Deja-Vu, Lustrum Press, 1973, showing a black-and-white photograph of a figure performing a one-armed handstand on a beach in swimwear and a top hat, mounted on black card.
  • Interior spread of Ralph Gibson, Deja-Vu, Lustrum Press, 1973, left page showing a black-and-white photograph of a hand holding round wire-framed glasses against a garden background, right page showing the title DEJA-VU in italic serif type on white.
  • Interior spread of Ralph Gibson, Deja-Vu, Lustrum Press, 1973, left page showing a figure with long hair obscuring their face standing before an arched doorway in high contrast black and white, right page showing a single cloud against a black ground.
  • Interior spread of Ralph Gibson, Deja-Vu, Lustrum Press, 1973, left page showing a figure in a white vest seen from behind amid large stone blocks, right page showing a curved architectural form and a hanging hand against a pale sky.
  • Interior page of Ralph Gibson, Deja-Vu, Lustrum Press, 1973, showing a figure on a beach holding a framed black-and-white portrait photograph of a woman in profile before their own face, sea and sky visible behind.
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Lustrum Press

Ralph Gibson — Deja-Vu, Lustrum Press, New York, 1973

Ralph Gibson — Deja-Vu, Lustrum Press, New York, 1973

£90.00 GBP
£90.00 GBP
Sale Sold out
Taxes included.

Softcover, 21.5 × 29.5 cm, black-and-white photographic reproductions throughout. Good vintage condition: light handling wear, surface rubbing, minor creasing, and age toning consistent with a fifty-year-old photographic publication. Clean interior.

Deja-Vu is among the key books of Ralph Gibson’s early period and forms part of the sequence of publications that established him as one of the most influential photobook makers of the twentieth century. Issued through Lustrum Press, the imprint Gibson founded in New York, the book appeared during a moment when photographers increasingly treated the book itself as the primary site of presentation rather than a secondary record of exhibitions or prints.

The photographs resist straightforward narrative. Fragments of bodies, architectural forms, shadows, gestures, reflections, and isolated objects appear in carefully arranged succession. Meaning is generated less through individual images than through their placement beside one another. The page becomes a unit of composition.

Published in New York during the same decade that saw the photobook emerge as an autonomous artistic form, Deja-Vu belongs to a lineage that includes Ed Ruscha, Robert Frank, and the growing community of artists using sequencing, repetition, and visual association as material. Gibson’s contribution was to push photography toward something dreamlike and psychological while remaining formally precise.

What remains striking is the economy of the object. Black cover. Title. Image. Sequence. Nothing excessive. The publication operates as a controlled structure through which images move from one page to the next.

Original 1973 copies continue to circulate, though increasingly through specialist photography dealers and institutional collections. As photobook history becomes more closely studied, early Lustrum Press titles have become recognised not simply as photography books but as foundational examples of the artist book as a medium in its own right.

A photographic sequence constructed from recurrence, displacement, and visual memory. Less a collection of photographs than a system for arranging them.

Shipping and handling included in the listed price.

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