Customer Reviews

Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 70s

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I really can't add much to the glowing reviews of this book you can find on the eyecurious, nyartbeat, 5B4, Conscientious, freelibrary (from Afterimage), and newyorker Internet sites. Suffice it to say that if you like photography, especially artistic photography, especially artistic photography books, this is something you'll want on your shelf.

It's 9x12 inches and 240 pages of information and enjoyment. Ryuichi Kaneko in the "Introduction" reflects on the personal impact of Japanese photobooks. Ivan Vartanian's essay "The Japanese Photobook: Toward an Immediate Media" gives a great scholarly overview of the book's topic. An interview with famed photographer and photobook maker Daido Moriyama provides an interesting artist's perspective.

The body of the book describes 43 (by my count) Japanese photobooks. Space does not allow a complete listing here (for that, check out the ajapanesebook site), but among the books are Nobuyoshi Araki's "Sentimental Journey," "Okinawa: Araki Nobuyoshi Photobook 2," and "Tokyo: Araki Nobuyoshi Photobook 3"; Ken Domon's "The Children Of Chikuho"; Masahisa Fukase's "Ravens"; Eikoh Hosoe's "Man And Woman"; Yasuhiro Ishimoto's "Someday, Somewhere"; Kawada Kikuji's "The Map"; Daido Moriyama's "Japanese Theater"; Takuma Nakahira's "For A Language To Come"; and Yutaka Takanashi's "Towards The City." For each book, you get a photo of the slipcase (if available) and of the front cover; a description of the book's publisher, size, method of printing, etc; a 1-2 page essay about the book; and photos of several page spreads. The page spread photos are high-quality and can be up to half the size of the book's pages, so they allow the reader to appreciate nuances of the photobooks.

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I bought this book about 2 months ago while I was in Europe. I hesitated a bit as I was already having too much weight to travel back home and more books meant more weight which meant $$ to pay at the airport (which I was obliged to do). But as I flipped through the book a couple of times trying to decide on whether to buy it or not, I just made up my mind, based on the beautiful images of beautiful books, the amount of text there and beautiful layout. This is not just a book filled with some nice reproductions of strong work, it's also informative and if this is something you feel interested about (Japanese photographers/photobooks) then this will be an enjoyable read. I knew of a few Japanese photographers before, but after buying this book (and I have only read parts of it so far) I know a lot more about photography in Japan in 1960s and 70s, and some of the amazing photographers still working today.
Of course a book about such subjects has to be beautifully laid-out. so as I said, it's both informative and eye-pleasing.