Stories from a Year in Spain (1959-1960)
Margaretta K. Mitchell, photographs, drawings, engravings and text
Elysian Editions, 2022
In diary entries, prose and images, Mitchell recalls everyday life with “la familia” and outings in the countryside. With the camera she had used at Polaroid Corporation (customized with a good lens), she visited Segovia and the Alhambra. With a secondhand Rolleiflex purchased in Madrid, she shot 2-1/4 images of Madrid and Guadalupe. At the same time, she was drawing — and the book includes sketches and wood engravings based on Spain drawings.
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For book and prints, contact Margaretta Mitchell / Elysian Editions.
Dreamscapes and Destinations
Margaretta K. Mitchell, photographs and text
Elysian Editions, 2021
In 2020, the first year of the pandemic, travel was out of the question — so Mitchell turned to photographs to revisit past destinations, some of which lived in her memory as dreamscapes. These 93 black and white images from England, Germany, France and the United States are grouped by region, with brief anecdotal introductions.
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For book and prints, contact Margaretta Mitchell / Elysian Editions.
Secret Garden
Margaretta K. Mitchell, photographs and text
Elysian Editions, 2020
Secret Garden includes 63 images (61 black and white, 2 color) and an Introduction which explores garden as magical scene. From Eve to the Green Man to photographer Annie Brigman, Mitchell’s essay links mythology, fairy tales, folklore and art history — tracing the human experience of the natural world.
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Island Dreams
Margaretta K. Mitchell (photographs and text), Sim Warkov (poems)
Elysian Editions, 2017
Post-World War II America was not only at the peak of power but also at the apex of idealism — longing for cultural innocence. In 1949 the Rogers and Hammerstein musical, South Pacific, was produced on the New York stage. Bali Hai was a mystical place on the distant horizon, embodying and reinforcing myths about what could occur should we escape to such an exotic locale. In these images, the metaphor has no clothes; they portray the body in nature, surrendering to day and night, to dark and light. We escape manmade history. With play as our work, time is measured in the joy of discovery.
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For book and prints, contact Margaretta Mitchell / Elysian Editions.
Iconographies: 20×24 Polaroid Camera Images
Margaretta K. Mitchell, photographs and text
Elysian Editions, 2015
In the 1980s, Mitchell received two grants from Polaroid Corporation to produce work on their 20×24 camera: In 1984, she spent 48 hours in their Boston studio photographing dancer Lori Belilove, a specialist in reconstructing Isadora Duncan’s work, aka Duncan Dance. In 1989, Mitchell worked in Polaroid’s New York studio on “Iconographies,” a series of iconic images from art and literature (such as Truth and Beauty, Mother and Child, Desire, and others). She also used the 20×24’s vertical format to create diptychs and triptychs (Adam and Eve, Death and the Maiden, Ave Maria, New World).
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For book and prints, contact Margaretta Mitchell / Elysian Editions.
On the Avenue — Limited Edition Artist’s Book
Margaretta K. Mitchell, photographs and text
Elysian Editions
Collected impressions of humanity and style from the streets of New York City.
Two editions:
• Purse-Bound (Limited Edition of 10, 2017) — a photography book designed as a fancy evening bag (handbound by Virginia Phelps, digital printing by Irene Imfeld), in the collections of Swarthmore College and Tufts University. Available from vampandtramp.com/finepress/m/Margaretta-K-Mitchell
• Perfectbound (Limited Edition of 40, with gatefold flaps, 2018). Available from Elysian Editions)
The Face of Poetry
by Margaretta K. Mitchell and Zack Rogow; foreword by Robert Hass
University of California Press, 2005 (386 pages)
Margaretta K. Mitchell conceived this volume after attending the celebrated Lunch Poems Reading Series at UC Berkeley. Her inspiration was to capture the faces of the poets who participated in the series — and her essay explores the role of portraiture, describing her studio sessions with these poets. Zack Rogow, poet, translator and coordinator of the Lunch Poems Reading Series, provides a general introduction and a brief biography of each poet. The foreword by former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass puts the book in the context of the current poetry scene.
Ruth Bernhard: Between Art and Life
by Margaretta K. Mitchell
Chronicle Books, 2000
A bio-memoir of the long and creative life of Ruth Bernhard, celebrated photographer and charismatic teacher.
Ruth Bernhard: The Eternal Body
Ruth Bernhard, photographs; Margaretta K. Mitchell, biography; foreword by Karen Sinsheimer
Chronicle Books, 1994 edition
The first monograph of Bernhard’s nudes, in print for 25 years, was celebrated in a newly designed edition featuring a new foreword by Karen Sinsheimer and an illuminating biography by Margaretta Mitchell. The book includes 50 images, and the back cover includes Ansel Adams’ comment on Bernhard, whom he called “the greatest photographer of the nude.”
Recollections: Ten Women of Photography
Viking Press, 1979
This traveling show, which Mitchell created for the International Center of Photography, was exhibited at seventeen American museums.
“Though it serves as a catalogue of a show currently touring the country, this is a real book.” —Hilton Kramer, The New York Times Book Review
“A Jewel of a Book” —Mademoiselle
English Gardens
Elysian Editions, 1996
Limited edition artist’s book of original archival pigment prints of English gardens, photographed in 1993.
To a Cabin
Viking Press, 1973
Dorothea Lange’s Steep Ravine photographs are celebrated in Mitchell’s tribute. “An intensely personal record of a setting in which the beauty of the people and the world is seen through the eyes of two immensely gifted women who are able to let the camera show both human joy and earthly dignity.” —Mike Cassidy, San Jose Mercury News
Gift of Place
Scrimshaw Press 1969
“The book is a magical combination of photography, poetry, of children, people, time and place.” —San Francisco Chronicle, 1971
UPCOMING FROM ELYSIAN EDITIONS:
Nature, Body, Time
Arcadia: Ode to Childhood
Full of Life