TOM BIANCHI — Living with Dickens. St. Martin’s Press, 1994

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. Paperback edition, following the 1993 first edition. Softcover, 80 pages, 21.9 × 22.3 cm. Black-and-white photographs and text. ISBN 0-312-10491-X.

Condition: Good. Rubbing and surface marking to wrappers, with edge wear, softened corners and light creasing. Mild toning and signs of handling internally. Green 75¢ retail sticker retained on the front cover.

Before concentrating on photography, Tom Bianchi worked for more than a decade as a painter and sculptor. His photographic practice developed during the AIDS crisis, bringing private life, friendship and intimacy into public view. Published shortly after Out of the Studio, Living with Dickens redirects that close observation toward domestic companionship: a sequence of photographs and short texts recording life with his Abyssinian cat, Dickens.

The square format and restrained typography place the book within the familiar language of the illustrated gift publication. Bianchi's photographs complicate that category through their attention to gesture, routine and occupation — Dickens among plants, at the table, inside cupboards and throughout the household.

The back cover retains the publisher's original price of $13.95. On the front, a later green 75¢ sticker has been placed directly across the title. The reduction is unusually visible: a commercial book moved through clearance, resale and retention, while both stages of its price history remain printed onto the object. The sticker now reads less as an obstruction than as the clearest record of the copy's circulation.