First printing 1999. - Limited edition of 25 copies 2002, in a deluxe clamshell box, with an original 14 x 11 inch matt-surface gelatin silver print (print edition of 25 numbered and signed by van Dongen). - From the publisher: "The first edition of Alba Nero sold out upon publication in 1999, and we are delighted to announce this timely reprint of Ron van Dongen's first monograph of large-scale floral still lifes. Alba Nero presents thirty of van Dongen's powerful and exquisite images, beautifully printed in duotone in an oversized 14 x 17 inches hardcover format. In his formally seductive series of botanical studies, van Dongen unearths floral secrets and prickly symbols of our alternately nurturing and perilous relationship with nature. He shows us flowers as resourceful and delicate, decorative and essential, sacred and sensual, life force and death knell - and always suggestive of all that is beyond our tethered reach. Plucked from their backyard habitat and brought indoors, these dazzling arums, anemones and papavers are isolated or paired for the camera as emblems of a postmodern struggle between nature's vagabond wilderness and culture's manipulation of its blithe freedom. Van Dongen's work has been widely shown in the US and abroad, and is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston."