First edition thus of this meditation on resistance, after the scarce original clandestine version with gelatin silver photographs produced by the artists in a small number of copies during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. During the war, Heisler, who was Jewish, was sheltered by Styrsky and his partner Toyen and then by Toyen alone after Styrsky died in 1942. Fr. Borovy issued this posthumous edition with gravure reproductions as soon as the war ended. Devoid of people, Styrsky's photographs are drawn from three series he made in Paris and Prague between 1934 and 1935; his subjects include shop windows, mannequins, building facades and street signs. It is Heisler's text which makes the book's intention clear, ending with a passionate cry to rise against the Nazi occupation: 'The fire, today so carefully locked up, will open out wide and will pass from hand to hand.'

First edition; 8vo (212 x 150 mm, 8¼ x 6 in); black-and-white photographs printed in gravure by Neubert a synové, design by Karel Teige, minor offsetting to facing pages; photo-illustrated wrappers printed in black and red, light wear to extremities, starting at head, a very good copy in the probably original, almost certainly contemporary, lightly worn tissue dust-jacket; 64, [4]pp.

The Book of 101 Books pp116-7; The Photobook: A History I, p197; The Open Book pp140-1; Czech and Slovak Photo Publications 268, p266.