Richard Avedon. 
 
Abrams: 2003. First edition. Hardcover, accordion-style book in a slip case. Quarto. Slipcase has a couple of folds on its spine, and slight scuffing on the black margin on the cover. Minor stains along the top of the slipcase and bumped corners on its bottom. Back board has a few small trace stains. Unpaginated. Book near fine, slipcase very good. 
 
Avedon's stylized simplicity makes his viewer a captive of his subjects as he somehow allows public persona and private self to converge, whether it's in a melancholy Marilyn Monroe or a California bee keeper named Ronald Fischer. The accordion book Portraits, with an essay by Maria Morris Hambourg and Mia Fineman and one by Avedon, is the one coffee table book in the world that is easy to lose hours in even while it feels delicate and intricate as you hold it. 
 
"Death is a young poet's romance, and an old man's business."