MORTENSEN, William. Monsters and Madonnas, San Francisco: Camera Craft, 1936. Softcover with metal ring binding, unpaginated, 20 screen-gravure and 10 halftone illustrations. Second edition (December 1936). his is Mortensen's acknowledged magnum opus and one of the most important books from the second generation of pictorialists. The first edition (also 1936) was printed in halftone, so this is the first in gravure. The gravure edition was so popular that it was printed four times, over twelve years. The well-designed cover, which has the subtitle "A Book of Methods" features the provocative full-frontal nude "Torso" Inside, the book includes text by Mortensen on both his photographic technique and aesthetic theories. The rich, full-page gravures are divided into three sections: characters, nudes, and grotesques. Each plate is accompanied by a page of analysis and sometimes a small halftone of the image before Mortensen manipulated it. Mortensen (1897-1965) was the most widely known American pictorialist during the 1930s and 1940s. He made flamboyant images, wrote many books and articles, and ran a photography school in Laguna Beach, California. Covers browned, stained, and worn.

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