Henze Boekhout — Seconds First

Amsterdam: Fragment. First edition, first printing. 80 pp., 28,5 x 28,5. Condition: Very Good (VG). Light toning to page edges. Very nice copy! Without dust jacket (as issued). Review by Hans Aarsman in NRC There’s something about this book that makes me keep picking it up. I’ve already had it in my house for a few weeks and I still can’t pin down what makes it so special. No spectacular photo, no accessible theme. Whenever I open it, the book slips on to my lap while I drift into dreaming with a picture of the back of a bus driver’s head. The next time the daydreaming starts in front of a picture of a piano with a projection screen next to it. I can scarcely see a link between the photos, sometimes a shape recurs, or a colour, that’s all. However, they are irrefutably related to one another. Someone is trying to say something, but what? Sometimes it is best to begin at the beginning, sit down at a table and methodically write down everything you notice. The double title-page: SECONDS is printed on the left, FIRST is on the right. Both words are printed on a background that suddenly reminds me of the corrugated aluminium of my draining-board, that well-known honeycomb pattern. That is where the dishcloths are left. So this book is not a collection of someone’s most beautiful photographs. This is the stage on which the first violin may play, the one who would otherwise have to remain in the shadows: dishcloths, draining-boards. I see television sets in the book, a remote-control has even been given the leading role.