Japan Exposures Books Recent Additions

Look at this People, by ERIC

ERIC — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:32:43 -0500

The photographer ERIC, who was born in Hong Kong but has lived in Japan since 1997, follows up on his epic 2008 release GOOD LUCK CHINA with yet another foray into Mainland China, this time centered primarily on the Yunnan Province.

With his medium format camera and on-camera flash, ERIC negotiates the masses of people walking past his camera in a spirit of exploration and discovery, and not mere confrontation. As he writes in his afterword,

What I look for more than anything else in snap shots is being able to see the subject's originality ("oneself") more vividly than through our naked eyes.[...] Still photo is a 2D plane through fixed pigments. What is expressed is an illusion and this formation is solely dependent on the heart of the one who expresses and the one who enjoys it. However, that is why, I believe, that photography keeps the possibility of seeking into people's souls.

Softcover, 25.5cm x 21cm, 120 pages, approx 111 color photographs. Afterword by ERIC in Japanese and English.

To preview the contents of this book, click the images below.

KANDO, by Harumichi Saito

Harumichi Saito — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:34:28 -0500

Harumichi Saito, a 2010 Excellence Award winner in Canon's annual New Cosmos of Photography Award competition, is a deaf man who is motivated to document the lives of those living with disabilities in a way that is neither bathed-in-pathos austere, nor cloying-with-condescension sweetness, but rather just as they are, as they appear before Saito's camera.

Softcover, 28.5cm x 22cm, 140 pages, approx. 121 color photographs.

To preview the contents of this book, click the images below.

Nippon Exhibition Catalog (Signed), by Hiromi Tsuchida

Hiromi Tsuchida — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:52:21 -0500

Published in late 2007 on the occasion of Hiromi Tsuchida's large retrospective at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, the volume brings together all the major works and themes of Tsuchida's career from the early 1970s up to the present day.

Beginning with Zokushin, continuing on with both the black and white and color versions of his Counting Grains of Sand series, and closing with him "Daily Self-Portrait" series, all the major strands of Tsuchida's Japan are here.

Softcover, with obi. 25cm x 25cm, 164 pages, approx. 150 color and b/w photographs. Extended captions for all photos in Japanese and English. Accompanied by three essays on Tsuchida's work, available both in Japanese and English. Signed by the artist.

Please note: These are NEW copies we are selling.

To preview the contents of this book, click the images below.

Mirai-chan, by Kotori Kawashima

Kotori Kawashima — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:55:58 -0500

Originally published in a small print run by a Tokyo gallery, Mirai-chan quickly sold out. Now it has been republished and reportedly was one of the best-selling photo books in Japan of the last year, selling more than 80,000 copies to date and being selected the number one "Book of the Year 2011" by the Japanese magazine, Da Vinci.

Softcover, 23cm x 15cm, 204 pages, approx. 200 color photographs.

To preview the contents of this book, click the images below.

bibo (Signed), by Mariko Shindo

Mariko Shindo — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:19:40 -0500

Mariko Shindo is a relatively young photographer who graduated in 2001 from Tokyo Visual Arts. In bibo, her first photo book, she presents a series she has been continually working on the last few years -- a portrait of the large series. These are not your normal street snaps or cityscapes, however. Through hand development and other "distressing" means, we never get a clear view of the subject, but rather feel the push and pull of the urban environment.

Hardcover, 22cm x 30cm, 84 pages, 79 b/w photos. Limited print run of 600. Signed by the artist.

To preview the contents of this book, click the images below.

Retreat (Signed), by Satoru Iwamoto

Satoru Iwamoto — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:17:56 -0500

Retreat is the first book of the 30-year old photographer Satoru Iwamoto, although the work itself -- of various religious and traditional rituals and festivals -- seems to come from the eye of a much-older vintage. It's true that this is well-trodden subject matter, but it's also true that in a continually fractured, urbanized, pop-centric Japan, it's important that this subject matter can attract a younger generation to document its tenuous existence.

In his afterword to the book, Hiromi Tsuchida, who established himself on the Japanese photography scene in the early 70s with Zokushin, his own explorations of this subject matter, writes:

The idea of reducing his expression to a personal perspective must have never occurred to him....Rather than hastily discovering his own self, Iwamoto focuses on others. The lens of his camera transcends the self and continues to go further and further externally toward others. Thus, his perspective lies in the opposite vector of today's personalized photographic expression.

Hardcover, with dustcover. 24cm x 20cm, 60 pages, 47 b/w photographs. Afterwords by Hiromi Tsuchida and Satoru Iwamoto in both Japanese and English. Signed by the artist.

To preview the contents of this book, click the images below.

Analog Days, by John Harding

John Harding — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:30:09 -0500

Analog Days brings together work by the American John Harding, spanning four decades from the 1970s up to the decade just past. Primarily centered around San Francisco, these are the streets of that fair city by the bay as it moves from raw, messy post-60s hippiedom to reurbanized yuppiedom.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Harding was among those primarily American photographers who followed William Eggleston's lead and created an explosion of compelling color photography work. "New Color" as they were called. In Sally Eauclaire's 1987 American Independents: Eighteen Color Photographs, along with such well-regarded colorists as the aforementioned Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Mitch Epstein, Joel Meyerowitz, Richard Misrach, and Joel Sternfeld, one can find Harding.

Hardcover, 31cm x 26cm, 98 pages, 78 color photographs. Foreword by Sandra Phillips, Senior Curator of Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (in Japanese and English). Edited by Henry Wessel.

To preview the contents of this book, click the images below.

Flesh Love, by Photographer HAL

Photographer HAL — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:47:52 -0500

Photographer HAL's' follow-up to his 2009 Couple Jam.

Softcover, 15cm x 20cm, 72 color photographs. You can see sample work from this book at this Laughing Squid post.

Risen in the East (Signed), by Shintaro Sato

Shintaro Sato — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 04:54:36 -0500

In Shintaro Sato's well-received Tokyo Twilight Zone, much of the Tokyo cityscapes he shot were in the eastern part of the metropolis where he grew up and where he today makes his home.

It is therefore not surprising that Sato would take personally the Tokyo Sky Tree broadcasting, restaurant and observation tower that has been undergoing construction for the last three and a half years, and is due to open in February 2012, and the way the 634-meter structure has and will continue to dominate the landscape of his hometown.

With the opening of the tower imminent, Sato has published Risen in the East, a book of mainly panoramas to show just how omnipresent the new structure is.

Signed by the artist.

Walking with Leica 3 (Signed), by Kazuo Kitai

Kazuo Kitai — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 04:52:43 -0500

Since 2005, Kazuo Kitai has been publishing a short photo essay in each month's Nippon Camera magazine entitled "Walking with Leica" where he presents short records of a typical Japanese activity -- the photo walk. These have been collected in book form, of which this is the most recent to date (published December, 2011). This volume collects photos from the essays published in 2009 and 2010.

Hardcover with dustcover, 16cm x 23cm, 72 pages, 56 b/w photos. Afterword in Japanese only. Signed by the artist.