Barbra Streisand, Art Edition No. 1–100, Steve Schapiro 'Barbra for Harper's Bazaar'

Somewhere between the signed, numbered print and the sum a collector pays to own one of the first hundred copies, the ordinary questions about a photography book stop applying. This is the Art Edition of Steve Schapiro's Barbra Streisand, held to a run of a hundred numbered sets and bundled with a print of 'Barbra for Harper's Bazaar,' and it belongs to a category that has less to do with reading than with owning.

So who is the object really for? Not, in the first instance, the working photographer hunting for a reference to keep near the desk. The trade edition of this book already exists at a fraction of the outlay, with the same photographs and the same design between its covers. What the Art Edition adds is scarcity and a gallery-ready artifact: a museum-grade print, signed by the photographer, made to be framed rather than shelved.

None of which slights the picture itself. Schapiro photographed Streisand early, in the 1960s, before the persona hardened, and his access produced portraits that catch her mid-invention: watchful, funny, already directing the room she is supposedly just posing in. 'Barbra for Harper's Bazaar' is a genuinely fine image, the kind of editorial portrait that only gains from enlargement, and as a print on good paper it will hold a wall for years.

Schapiro was a photojournalist first, schooled on the civil-rights movement and the film sets of the era, and that reporter's patience shows in how he waited for Streisand to forget the lens was there. The Harper's Bazaar sitting caught her at the hinge between Broadway discovery and full-blown star, when the face was famous but not yet armored against being seen. It is a document of a specific moment as much as a portrait of a person, and the moment does not come back.

A collector would say that is exactly the point, that certain photographs are meant to be lived with at scale, and that a print signed by the photographer's own hand carries a value no paperback can approach. Fair enough. The object is beautifully made, and TASCHEN's Art Editions are produced to a standard that justifies a real part of the premium. The signing is genuine, the numbering is genuine, the paper and the tipped-in mounting are exactly what the price promises. The complaint is not about quality.

It is about use, which is a different measure from value. Picture the edition arriving in its protective sleeve, the certificate of authenticity, the careful unboxing, the search for wall space at the right light. That is a fine afternoon for a collector and a strange one for a photographer who wanted, mostly, to study how Schapiro handled a young subject who already knew where the camera was. For that second person, the plain trade edition does everything this one does, minus the frame and the four figures.