Telegraph 3 A.M. by Richard Misrach

(1974)

First edition. First impression.

Medium Format hardback in Fine condition. Some age toning to the cover. Previous owner inscription on the back copy-write page. Inside cover flap has been cut. (See pictures for reference.)

About

In the early 1970s, artist Richard Misrach walked every day down Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California, to get from his home to his job in the photography studio at the student centre of the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC). Struggling to find meaning in his own work as a young photographer—Misrach had just learned the medium at the ASUC studio a few years earlier—he was suddenly struck by a realisation that he could turn his camera at the post-flower-child counterculture of his own neighbourhood. “This is what’s going on,” he later reflected. “Why am I not photographing it?” Rather than sneaking pictures with a handheld camera, Misrach wanted to allow his sitters to be part of the process. He asked each person for permission to make their portrait and used a Hasselblad camera set on a tripod, a slower and more formal approach that enabled his subjects to pose and confront his lens. Over three years, from 1972 to ’74, he dedicated himself to this body of work, which culminated in the publication of his first book, Telegraph 3 A.M.