"Unseen Versailles", First Edition 1981

The first edition of the 1981 photobook "Unseen Versailles" represents a haunting collaboration between American photographer Deborah Turbeville (1932–2013) and writer Louis Auchincloss. Commissioned by Jacqueline Onassis, Turbeville’s evocative, tinted black-and-white imagery captures the palace's hidden, dust-laden chambers and crumbling grandeur through a romantic, avant-garde lens.

Circa 1981, this first edition is an original period work that won the American Book Award for Photography and redefined the boundaries of the medium.

Clothbound in a photo-illustrated dust jacket, this 160-page quarto volume features high-quality reproductions on heavy paper stock. Rooted in the Baroque tradition of the palace itself but filtered through a 20th-century modern sensibility, the book stands as a poetic study of history, memory, and the enduring allure of Versailles.