World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
CLOSED FOR SUMMER.
RE-OPENING 01.02.24
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2023, English
Softcover, 170 pages, 24 x 18 cm
Published by
Gallows Fruit / Thailand
$70.00 - Out of stock
Issue 1 of New Juche's journal HEAT DEATH, published by Gallows Fruit, Thailand. Text and image by New Juche; editorial assistance by Steve Finbow and Karolina Ursula Urbaniak; Design by Karolina Ursula Urbaniak and New Juche.
TOPOPHILIA; NOSTALGIA; ARCHITECTURE; LANDSCAPE; ZONE; RUIN; SEX; ENVIRONMENT; PHOTOGRAPHY; NON-AFFILIATED
"In a room on the top floor I closed the door behind me and took a photo album into the dusty bathtub and lent back with my knees up in front of me and my head on a greasy pillow. Light filtered very pleasantly down through the green vines that laced the unglazed window and the fulsome trees outside. A second shaft of light fell through a space in the torn ceiling. My body felt very still, apart from my heart which I could feel beating and also hear, and it was the only sound in the room apart from birdsong."
New Juche is a writer and artist based in Southeast Asia since 2003. Dennis Cooper has called him "one of the most inspiring, original and groundbreaking artists working today". New Juche's published books include Mountainhead, Bosun, The Devils, and The Worm.
1986, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 144 pages, 22.9 x 25.1 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Aperture / New York
$550.00 - In stock -
First 1986 hardcover edition of Nan Goldin’s classic photo book, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, published by Aperture, New York. A landmark work in the field of raw sociological reportage, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a visual diary chronicling the struggles for intimacy and understanding among the friends and lovers whom Goldin describes as her “tribe.” These photographs described a lifestyle that was visceral, charged and seething with a raw appetite for living, and the book soon became the swan song for an era that reached its peak in the early 1980s. Through an accurate and detailed record of Goldin’s life, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency records a personal odyssey as well as a more universal understanding of the different languages men and women speak. All these years later, Goldin’s lush color photography and candid style still demand that the viewer encounter their profound intensity head-on. The book’s influence on photography and other aesthetic realms continues to grow, making it a classic of contemporary photography.
From Goldin's introduction: "I sometimes don't know how I feel about someone until I take his or her picture. I want the people in my pictures to stare back. I want to show exactly what my world looks like, without glamorization, without glorification."
"Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a beggar’s opera of recent times. Here were real thieves and unexpected heroes, and a sense that some things in life might still be worth a brawl."—Artforum
Nan Goldin was born in Washington, D.C., in 1953, and grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts. Her first solo show was held in Boston in 1973. She moved to New York in 1979, where she began documenting the city’s gay and transvestite scenes and developed the informal snapshot aesthetic for which she is celebrated today. Goldin was the 2007 recipient of the Hasselblad Award.
Very Good copy - fine copy with VG dust jacket. Definite 1986 first edition in the original unclipped ($39.95) dust jacket, designed by Keith Davis.
1967, Japanese
Softcover, 294 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Shinpusha / Tokyo
$40.00 - Out of stock
Rare March 1967 issue of Sexology for One Million People (rough translation), a magazine published by the underground bookstore Shinpusha in Tokyo in the late 1960s. As the title suggests, the magazine covers sexual customs and sexual sciences from all over the world and throughout history, but particularly focussing on liberated modern sexuality in Japan and abroad. This March special issue with the grim theme of "Crime and Punishment" features many articles on sex crimes, voyeurism, kidnapping, molestation and rape, complete with crime photography, wild info-graphics of sex-crime statistics, police files, court cases, and much more. Also includes profile on pink film heroine Tamaki Katori, photo features of Western female nudes, articles on female physiognomy with cartoons an photographic assistance, a "sexual love law" roundtable discussion with a variety of promiscuous "reckless" Japanese teenage girls, special feature on "unusual ways to enjoy the female body by 10 celebrities"... even a photo guide to kissing. Lots of illustrations, cartoons, and wonder photo-collage and single spot-colour sections throughout.
Very Good copy with light wear/age.
2023, English
Hardcover, 120 pages, 27 x 20 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$80.00 - Out of stock
George Grosz created his last major series of paintings and watercolours, the “Stick Men”, beginning in the mid-1940s in reaction to the devastating news about the Holocaust and the other atrocities of the Second World War. The deployment of atomic bombs at the end of the war, and the threat of a Third World War, further deepened his pessimistic vision of mankind’s future. He presented his “Stickmen” as dehumanized, famished beings aimlessly wandering through a contaminated, post-apocalyptic world. The catalogue forcefully contradicting the widespread misconception that Grosz had become “soft” and apolitical during his American years. The contrary is true: his Stick Men series is the culmination of the political and artistic convictions of a lifetime of struggle – an artistic legacy that, given the current state of the world, could not be more timely and relevant.
English and German text.
Published on occasion of the exhibitions: ‘The Grey Man Dances: The ‘Stick Men’ of George Grosz’, May – Oct 2023, Das Kleine Grosz Museum, Berlin; as well as a forthcoming exhibition at The Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY, 2024.
1974, Japanese
Softcover, 160 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Hayashi Bookstore / Tokyo
$45.00 - In stock -
Second issue of cult Japanese underground magazine, Heretical Literature, "A New Magazine Exploring The Unknown World of Aesthetics", published in August 1974. Edited by Munehiro Hayashi, with cover artwork by Pierre Molinier, this issue features colour galleries of Muzan-e (also known as "Bloody Prints", Japanese woodcut prints of violent nature published in the late Edo and Meiji periods), Viennese fantastic realist Rudolf Hausner, gallery of historical mistress illustrations, features/stories on Medieval subcontinental tales, the homo romantiscism of Rome, sadistic pornography, adult toys, rape, western astrology, and "miscellaneous notes on human waste and loincloths", with illustrations by Kaname Ozuma, Masao Koaku, Ran Akiyoshi, plus much more. Texts in Japanese.
VG copy, general light wear/tanning.
1994, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 212 pages, 13.6 cm x 19.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Seikyūsha / Tokyo
$90.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover edition of "Modern Sexuality Bizarre", written by Merzbow's Masami Akita and published only in Japan in 1994, an in-depth study of Japanese "abnormality" and the sexual bizarre in modern society, from its origins through to the culture of 'Ero-Guro Nonsense' — a period ranging from the end of the Taisho era (1912—1926) to the beginning of the Showa era (1926—1989). Akita discuss' the history of sexual media and the modern era of the bizarre with emphasis on its influence on psychology and sexual customs. From "The Dawn of Metamorphosis Research" and "Grotesque Trends" of modern pioneers of eroticism in Japan, including the legendary ero-guro magazines "Hentai Documents" and "Grotesque", their editors and authors Kitaaki Umehara and Kiyoshi Sakai, to othe rearly examples of modern obscene publishing, books of Showa modern bizarre, the modern female body and the beauty era, publishing of criminal sciences and the study of sexual criminals, the torture arts and Seiu Ito "the father of modern kinbaku", hentai psychology and the female viewpoint in criminal psychoogy, postwar marital theory, and more, all subjects illustrated in b/w. Merzbow is a noise project created in Tokyo, Japan in 1979 under the direction of noise technician Masami Akita. As well as a legendary underground noise artist, Akita is a prolific writer in Japan and frequently writes on the arts, music, erotica, esoterica, modern architecture, and animal rights, with articles on emerging subcultures and underground extreme cultures appearing in publications like SM Sniper, Studio Voice and Fool's Mate. His development of the Merzbow aesthetic ran parallel with a series of investigative books in which he catalogued and introduced a vast amount of hermetic types of music, sexual practices and autonomous creativity from the fringes to a fairly conservative (but not close-minded) mainstream Japanese audience. "Modern Sexuality Bizarre" is one of these very books.
First edition, Japanese text, fine copy with fine "textured" and illustrated dust jacket.
1987 / 2003 / 2007, English
Softcover, 518 + 507 pages, 22.4 x 15.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of Minnesota Press / Minnesota
$120.00 - Out of stock
First edition, mid 2000s re-prints of Theweleit's 1987 classic two-volume Male Fantasies as complete set translated from the original German. Volume 1: Women, Floods, Bodies, History; Volume 2: Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror.
Klaus Theweleit's two-volume work Mannerphantasien, published in the late 1970s, has become a contemporary German classic. Male Fantasies dives into the sexual, psychological and sociopolitical foundation of National Socialism as it was manifested in the Weimar Republic, arguing that fascism is not a political or economic phenomenon, but a method to manufacture a specific reality. Unlike any study before it, Male Fantasies centers upon the fantasies that preoccupied a group of men who played a crucial role in the rise of Nazism — The German Freikorps, the precursors of the SA and SS. Theweleit draws upon the novels, letters, and autobiographies of these proto-fascists and their contemporaries. There he discovered how the repudiation of one's own body—and of femininity—became a psychic compulsion associating masculinity with hardness, self-denial, and destruction.
The first volume of Male Fantasies deals primarily with the image of women in the collective unconscious of the fascist warrior—visions reflecting hatred and fear, culminating in a series of liquid metaphors—red tide, lava, mud—that threaten to engulf the male ego. In Volume 2, Theweleit shifts his attention to the male self-image. We are shown how the body becomes a mechanism for eluding the dreaded liquid and the "feminine" emotions associated with it. Armored, organized by mental and physical procedures like the military drill, the male body is transformed into "a man of steel'.' As Theweleit shows, only in war does this body find redemption from constraint.
Theweleit writes in a non orthodox, highly personal and associative style, heavily illustrating his works with incredible cartoons, advertisements, engravings, and posters of the era.
"Theweleit's book asks some key questions for those of us interested in Men's Studies. [It] takes us inside the psyches of men who, in Theweleit's analysis, are not destroying and murdering out of sublimation, but because they want to." — Men's Studies Review
"Klaus Theweleit's book, like the first volume of his massive study, usefully employs psychoanalytic insights in conjunction with the social-historical analyses of Elias, Mary Douglas, Foucault, and others to investigate the formation and nature of the fascist psyche in 1920s Germany, exploring here the male self-image, envisaged as armored against the threat and intrusion of the feminine." — Contemporary Sociology
Klaus Theweleit (b. 1942) is a German sociologist and writer. In 1977–78 he published the two volumes of Male Fantasies, now recognized as a pre-eminent work on the body, war and fascism. In 1990 he published Orpheus (und) Eurydike, the first volume of The Book of Kings, an examination of Western art through male artists’ relationship with women.
Very Good copies both, light wear. 2003 / 2007 prints of first Minnesota edition.
1968 / 1969, Japanese / French
4 Vols., softcover, approx. 1000 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo
$340.00 - Out of stock
Complete 4 issue run of Le Sang Et La Rose — a masterpiece of the Japanese underground! Opening with Kishin Shinoyama's photographic portraits of Yukio Mishima depicted as Saint Sebastian and onward through one thousand pages exploring the outer limits of subversive human potential!
Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose was a groundbreaking, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, published in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a legendary, controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and specialist in medieval demonology. The fourth final issue, and rarest of the four, edited by critic Masaaki Hiraoka and designed by self-taught painter, graphic designer and political activist, Kiyoshi Awazu (!) The importance of this magazine to the Japanese avant-garde and radical culture cannot be overstated.
Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant-garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative and subversive Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. As instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force.
Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), was a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade. In 1960 he and his publisher, Kyōji Ishii, were trialled for public obscenity over the publishing of Shibusawa's translation of de Sade's Juliette into the Japanese language. What was to be known as the "Sade Trial" took 9 years and although many of Japan's leading authors testified for the defense, in 1969 the Japanese Supreme Court ruled them guilty and charged. This did not deter Shibusawa, whose essays on black magic, demonology and eroticism were popular reading in Japan, and in 1981 he was awarded the 9th Izumi Kyoka Literature Prize.
All Good—VG copies with general wear and age.
1994, Japanese / English
Slipcase (w. obi), corrugated envelope, 64 looseleaf plates, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
B-Sellers / Japan
$220.00 - Out of stock
First stunning printing of Scene of Death, a rare 1994 death photo collection, published by B-Sellers in Japan only, compiled by Noriaki Nakagawa, Hitomi Komukai, and Yoichi Shihata. An elaborate and beautiful print production of the macabre. Housed in an illustrated slipcase with illustrated obi-strip and further within a stamped, button-and-tie-bound corrugated envelope, 64 looseleaf monochrome photographic plates reproduce images from "Atlas der Gerichtsmedizin", an absolutely fascinating collection by Weiman / Prokop, first published in 1963. Atlas der Gerichtsmedizin was originally a serious German scientific reference book for criminal investigators and those in the medical field — a photobook scrapbook of thousands of images of graphic human death scenes — suffocation and strangulation, drowning and death by water, death by burning and electrocution, crimes of passion, abuse and neglect, and more. In turn, this visual opus became a bible of reference imagery to a wave of musicians, artists and authors during the industrial avant-garde, from Throbbing Gristle to Paul Buck to Atrax Morgue. This meticulous and unique Japanese offering further influenced many Japanese artists in the 1990's.
Stamped and numbed.
"We believe the scenes of death is, in one sense, the most erotic of human nature. It is at the time of death that man no longer can attempt to control his inner self and therefore the real self appears vividly. Here we have opened the doors to a topic that is usually not only hidden but also shut out of the minds of man. Please share our excitement and take a glance into the world of hidden eroticism"—Scene of Death blurb.
As New, still sealed copy! Note: images taken from open/aged copy only to illustrate.
1996, Japanese
Hardcover (clothbound), 136 pages, 27 x 21.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
NG Publication / Tokyo
$600.00 - Out of stock
Very rare, highly sought after first book, Danse Macabre To The Hardcore Works, by Japanese "corpse photographer" Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, published by NG Publication (imprint of editor Kotaro Kobayashi — Too Negative, Ultra Negative, ORG, etc.) in 1996 in an edition of 1000 copies. This deluxe clothbound hardcover volume contains an unwavering, unapologetic look at death, collecting Tsurisaki's first works (a three year survey) bound together in glossy full-colour. Most never before published, the book includes his first published photographs from the second issue of Kobayashi's Too Negative magazine. Since 1994, Japanese photographer, film director, and writer Kiyotaka Tsurisaki (b. 1966) has become known for prolifically photographing dead bodies; his images of death and conflict from global "hot-spots" earning him a reputation as a leading underground photographer. For Kiyotaka’s raw photo-journalistic practice he habitats disaster areas, accident sites and war zones, locations where society has collapsed to seek out and photograph man's ultimate taboo — death. Many of these people met with violent ends, whether by vehicle crash, homicide, or suicide. The images are stark, confronting, bleak and profound. Tsurisaki also brings the viewer into morgues and forensics labs, where the macabre work of embalming and autopsy is unapologetically documented. His work has led him from Fukoshima and Japan’s suicide forest Aokigahara, Thailand, Colombia, Mexico, Russia, and Palestine, as well as other lawless or war-torn parts of the world, to photograph human corpses. In El Cartucho, Bogota, Kiyotaka filmed the shockumentary Orozco The Embalmer (2001) — a now cult classic in its genre, alongside his Junk Films (2007) and Wasteland (2012). Tsurisaki has published several photo books and authored Book Of The Dead (2011), and The Dogs of the Nuclear War: A Chronicle Of The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (2017).
Very Good—Near Fine copy.
2007, Japanese
DVD (90 mins)
Signed.,
Published by
Uplink / Japan
$180.00 - In stock -
Signed copy of the original 2007 Japanese issue DVD of "corpse photographer", director and author Kiyotaka Tsurisaki's collection of short shockumentaries, Junk Films. Signed on the disc by Kiyotaka Tsurisaki.
"Tsurisaki Kiyotaka, the infamous Japanese death photographer and director of Orozco the Embalmer picks up his video camera and heads into the depths of Hell yet again. Junk Films is a collection of short shockumentaries filmed between the late 1990's and early 2000's, with footage including everything from disemboweled auto accident victims in Krung Thep, to the self mutilating participants of the Vegetarian Festival in Phuket, and even footage of festering corpses in a Bogota landfill. 'Junk Films: The Collected Short Shockumentaries of Tsurisaki Kiyotaka' presents death with a sense of rawness and voyeurism. An unflinching look at the gruesome aftermath of combat, disasters, and accidents, this is like no other shockumentary you've ever seen."
As New copy with some wear to insert sheet, light rippling to back cover. Signed by Kiyotaka Tsurisaki on the disc.
1990, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 40 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Fatal Visions / Northcote
$25.00 - Out of stock
Fatal Visions No. 8, 1990 — SEXY GIRLS WITH SEXY GUNS cover, features Peter Jackson, The Cramps, Chinatown Beat, An American Trash Film Tour, Confessions from the Porn Industry, reviews on everything degenerate in publishing, video, the cinema...
Fatal Visions was a cult horror/exploitation film magazine from Melbourne, Australia, published and edited by journalist Michael Helms between 1988—1998, when publishing still had teeth. Starting out as a photocopied fanzine, the magazine was published two or three times a year, packed with reviews and interviews by a whole host of esteemed contributors, graphic assistance from the likes of Ian and Andrew Haig, branded by Philip Brophy and entirely devoted to "Very Frequent High-Level Violence, Sex, Coarse Language & Drug Use" aka horror, action and exploitation movies, cult TV and publishing, animation and all manner of associated underground trash/freak/sleaze publishing and video culture. Very notable for it's Chinatown Beat content and early coverage of Hong Kong action/exploitation due to its proximity to the Chinatown Cinema theaters in Melbourne. Editor Michael Helms has been writing about horror films made in Australia for Fangoria and contributing to France's L’Écran Fantastique and other international genre press for the best part of the last 25 years. Fatal Visions is great. Features loads of adverts from the annals a lost Melbourne. Self-publish or die.
Good copy, general wear.
1990, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 40 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Fatal Visions / Northcote
$25.00 - Out of stock
Fatal Visions No. 9, 1990 — THE KRAYS cover, features John Wayne Gacy, Alejandro Jodorowsky, John Waters, Ari Roussimoff and Chu Yuen, Chinatown Beat, An American Trash Film Tour, Hong Kong on Tape, Women with Blades, Monsters, Gunmen, reviews on everything degenerate in publishing, video, the cinema...
Fatal Visions was a cult horror/exploitation film magazine from Melbourne, Australia, published and edited by journalist Michael Helms between 1988—1998, when publishing still had teeth. Starting out as a photocopied fanzine, the magazine was published two or three times a year, packed with reviews and interviews by a whole host of esteemed contributors, graphic assistance from the likes of Ian and Andrew Haig, branded by Philip Brophy and entirely devoted to "Very Frequent High-Level Violence, Sex, Coarse Language & Drug Use" aka horror, action and exploitation movies, cult TV and publishing, animation and all manner of associated underground trash/freak/sleaze publishing and video culture. Very notable for it's Chinatown Beat content and early coverage of Hong Kong action/exploitation due to its proximity to the Chinatown Cinema theaters in Melbourne. Editor Michael Helms has been writing about horror films made in Australia for Fangoria and contributing to France's L’Écran Fantastique and other international genre press for the best part of the last 25 years. Fatal Visions is great. Features loads of adverts from the annals a lost Melbourne. Self-publish or die.
Good copy, general wear.
1992, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 40 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Fatal Visions / Northcote
$25.00 - In stock -
Fatal Visions No. 12, 1992 — NAKED LUNCH cover, features Cannibal Ottis Toole, Annie Sprinkle, Tsui Hark, Freddy Krueger, Tom Towles, Blood Lust, Chinatown Beat, reviews on everything degenerate in publishing, video, the cinema...
Fatal Visions was a cult horror/exploitation film magazine from Melbourne, Australia, published and edited by journalist Michael Helms between 1988—1998, when publishing still had teeth. Starting out as a photocopied fanzine, the magazine was published two or three times a year, packed with reviews and interviews by a whole host of esteemed contributors, graphic assistance from the likes of Ian and Andrew Haig, branded by Philip Brophy and entirely devoted to "Very Frequent High-Level Violence, Sex, Coarse Language & Drug Use" aka horror, action and exploitation movies, cult TV and publishing, animation and all manner of associated underground trash/freak/sleaze publishing and video culture. Very notable for it's Chinatown Beat content and early coverage of Hong Kong action/exploitation due to its proximity to the Chinatown Cinema theaters in Melbourne. Editor Michael Helms has been writing about horror films made in Australia for Fangoria and contributing to France's L’Écran Fantastique and other international genre press for the best part of the last 25 years. Fatal Visions is great. Features loads of adverts from the annals a lost Melbourne. Self-publish or die.
Good copy, general wear.
1992, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 40 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Fatal Visions / Northcote
$25.00 - Out of stock
Fatal Visions No. 13, 1992 — BRAINDEAD cover, features Mexploitation, Tsui Hark, BRAINDEAD, Hyapatia Lee (Vicki Lynch), Chinatown Beat, interview with a Necrophile, Danny Partridge, Noise, reviews on everything degenerate in publishing, video, the cinema...
Fatal Visions was a cult horror/exploitation film magazine from Melbourne, Australia, published and edited by journalist Michael Helms between 1988—1998, when publishing still had teeth. Starting out as a photocopied fanzine, the magazine was published two or three times a year, packed with reviews and interviews by a whole host of esteemed contributors, graphic assistance from the likes of Ian and Andrew Haig, branded by Philip Brophy and entirely devoted to "Very Frequent High-Level Violence, Sex, Coarse Language & Drug Use" aka horror, action and exploitation movies, cult TV and publishing, animation and all manner of associated underground trash/freak/sleaze publishing and video culture. Very notable for it's Chinatown Beat content and early coverage of Hong Kong action/exploitation due to its proximity to the Chinatown Cinema theaters in Melbourne. Editor Michael Helms has been writing about horror films made in Australia for Fangoria and contributing to France's L’Écran Fantastique and other international genre press for the best part of the last 25 years. Fatal Visions is great. Features loads of adverts from the annals a lost Melbourne. Self-publish or die.
Good copy, general wear.
1993, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 40 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
Published by
Fatal Visions / Northcote
$25.00 - Out of stock
Fatal Visions No. 14, 1993 — BODY MELT cover, features Sam Raimi, Cynthia Rothrock, Mexploitation, Chinatown Beat, BODY MELT, reviews on everything degenerate in publishing, video, the cinema...
Fatal Visions was a cult horror/exploitation film magazine from Melbourne, Australia, published and edited by journalist Michael Helms between 1988—1998, when publishing still had teeth. Starting out as a photocopied fanzine, the magazine was published two or three times a year, packed with reviews and interviews by a whole host of esteemed contributors, graphic assistance from the likes of Ian and Andrew Haig, branded by Philip Brophy and entirely devoted to "Very Frequent High-Level Violence, Sex, Coarse Language & Drug Use" aka horror, action and exploitation movies, cult TV and publishing, animation and all manner of associated underground trash/freak/sleaze publishing and video culture. Very notable for it's Chinatown Beat content and early coverage of Hong Kong action/exploitation due to its proximity to the Chinatown Cinema theaters in Melbourne. Editor Michael Helms has been writing about horror films made in Australia for Fangoria and contributing to France's L’Écran Fantastique and other international genre press for the best part of the last 25 years. Fatal Visions is great. Features loads of adverts from the annals a lost Melbourne. Self-publish or die.
Good copy, general wear.
1993, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 40 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
Published by
Fatal Visions / Northcote
$25.00 - In stock -
Fatal Visions No. 15, 1993 — Angela Dorian cover, features Ari Roussimoff and The Green River Killer, Ringo Lam, Dan Simmons, Cult TV, Chinatown Beat, Melbourne Film Fest '93, Melbourne videostore guide, reviews on everything degenerate in publishing, video, the cinema...
Fatal Visions was a cult horror/exploitation film magazine from Melbourne, Australia, published and edited by journalist Michael Helms between 1988—1998, when publishing still had teeth. Starting out as a photocopied fanzine, the magazine was published two or three times a year, packed with reviews and interviews by a whole host of esteemed contributors, graphic assistance from the likes of Ian and Andrew Haig, branded by Philip Brophy and entirely devoted to "Very Frequent High-Level Violence, Sex, Coarse Language & Drug Use" aka horror, action and exploitation movies, cult TV and publishing, animation and all manner of associated underground trash/freak/sleaze publishing and video culture. Very notable for it's Chinatown Beat content and early coverage of Hong Kong action/exploitation due to its proximity to the Chinatown Cinema theaters in Melbourne. Editor Michael Helms has been writing about horror films made in Australia for Fangoria and contributing to France's L’Écran Fantastique and other international genre press for the best part of the last 25 years. Fatal Visions is great. Features loads of adverts from the annals a lost Melbourne. Self-publish or die.
Good copy, general wear.
1994, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 40 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Fatal Visions / Northcote
$25.00 - Out of stock
Fatal Visions No. 17, 1994 — BAD BOY BUBBY cover, features John Woo, Ringo Lam, EYEBALL in Asia, Melbourne Filmfest Corpse 1994, Chinatown Beat, Ren & Stimpy, The Crow, UFO Dave, reviews on everything degenerate in publishing, video, the cinema...
Fatal Visions was a cult horror/exploitation film magazine from Melbourne, Australia, published and edited by journalist Michael Helms between 1988—1998, when publishing still had teeth. Starting out as a photocopied fanzine, the magazine was published two or three times a year, packed with reviews and interviews by a whole host of esteemed contributors, graphic assistance from the likes of Ian and Andrew Haig, branded by Philip Brophy and entirely devoted to "Very Frequent High-Level Violence, Sex, Coarse Language & Drug Use" aka horror, action and exploitation movies, cult TV and publishing, animation and all manner of associated underground trash/freak/sleaze publishing and video culture. Very notable for it's Chinatown Beat content and early coverage of Hong Kong action/exploitation due to its proximity to the Chinatown Cinema theaters in Melbourne. Editor Michael Helms has been writing about horror films made in Australia for Fangoria and contributing to France's L’Écran Fantastique and other international genre press for the best part of the last 25 years. Fatal Visions is great. Features loads of adverts from the annals a lost Melbourne. Self-publish or die.
Good copy, general wear.
1996, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi-strip), 256 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
Published by
Core Magazine / Tokyo
$120.00 - In stock -
Don't judge a book by it's cover — you've been warned! Straight out of the young nihilist 90s, the second volume of the very short-lived and absolutely demented Seikimatsu Club (End of the Century Club), published in Tokyo between 1996—2000 for a total of only five volumes. This second volume, "Deathtpia in Suburbia", has the feature theme of Horror! Bizarre! Bizarre! Cruelty! and is packed to the absolute brim with "corpses, freaks, spectacles, murders, suicides, autopsies, rapes, sickness, pain, accident, war, religious rituals, violence, forensics, foetuses. A shocking document that eliminates all fiction (all genuine)!"
With contributors to this issue including Masami Akita (Merzbow), Masaaki Aoyama (author), Kiyotaka Tsurisaki (corpse photographer), Suehiro Maruo (ero guro manga artist), Teruo Ishii (ero guro film director), Kotaro Kobayashi (Too Negative editor-in-chief), Trevor Brown (artist), you should know what you are getting yourself into.
Following the trajection of fellow Japanese abnormal subculture magazines such as Kotaro Kobayashi's notorious Too Negative, Ultra Negative, ORG, etc., and in the spirit of a new wave of 90's nihilist publishing around the world (Answer Me!, Killing Times, Fuck!, AMOK, Feral House, etc.) End of the Century Club stares directly into the dark recesses of humanity and presents its viewers with the uncompromising extremes of our global culture. The real stuff. Where Too Negative presents itself as a glossy colour photo/art magazine, End of the Century Club is almost like a Whole Earth Catalog to the authentic macabre. With articles, interviews, reports, catalogues and hundreds of images spanning all manner of medical/autopsy/corpse photography, death journalism, serial killers, formalihide babies, war/shock accident/crime scenes, hara-kiri, murder, rape, slaughterhouse, forensic books, international underground magazines, Photobook of World Diseases, City of Sodom, corpses on the internet, Underground Baby Contest, Atlas of Dermatology, complete guide to Freaks movies, the Garbage Pail Kids, religious ceremonies, animal deformities, Interview with "The King of Cult" ero guro film director Teruo Ishii, bizarro sex, acrotomophila, artist Joel Peter Witkin's world, interview with Masaaki Aoyama, interview with corpse photographer Kotaro Kobayashi (Death, Hardcore Works, Too Negative, Billy, etc.), photography of George Dureau, interview with fetish film director and producer Kaoru Adachi, interview with experimental film director Shozin Fukui (Metal Days, Gerorisuto, Caterpillar, 964 Pinocchio, Rubber's Lover...), article on "Serial Killers & Record Junkies" by Toshihiko Hironaka (of Boris, Balzac, Hellbent fame), and all sorts of other curios from the mondo, bizarro realm.
Includes "gorgeous" 24-page high-quality corpse photo booklet feature and cover art by Trevor Brown.
Not for the fain-hearted. You'll feel like a shower after.
Very Good copy with dust jacket and obi.
1997, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi-strip), 256 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Core Magazine / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
Don't judge a book by it's Trevor Brown cover — you've been warned! Straight out of the young nihilist 90s, the third volume of the very short-lived and absolutely demented Seikimatsu Club (End of the Century Club), published in Tokyo between 1996—2000 for a total of only five volumes. This third volume, "The World You Don't Know", has the feature theme of exposing "a reality erased from everyday life", which sums it up... packed to the absolute brim with "freaks, corpses, bestiality, autopsies, fetal executions, lynchings, traffic accidents, plane crashes, amputee, heteromorphic animals, freak shows, corpse museums, shemales, etc. A shocking document that eliminates all fiction (all genuine)!"
With contributors to this issue including Masami Akita (Merzbow), Masaaki Aoyama (author), Kiyotaka Tsurisaki (corpse photographer), Hideshi Hino (horror manga artist / Guinea Pig director), Kotaro Kobayashi (Too Negative editor-in-chief), Trevor Brown (artist), you should know what you are getting yourself into.
Following the trajection of fellow Japanese abnormal subculture magazines such as Kotaro Kobayashi's notorious Too Negative, Ultra Negative, ORG, etc., and in the spirit of a new wave of 90's nihilist publishing around the world (Answer Me!, Killing Times, Fuck!, AMOK, Feral House, etc.) End of the Century Club stares directly into the dark recesses of humanity and presents its viewers with the uncompromising extremes of our global culture. The real stuff. Where Too Negative presents itself as a glossy colour photo/art magazine, End of the Century Club is almost like a Whole Earth Catalog to the authentic macabre. With articles, interviews, reports, catalogues and hundreds of images spanning all manner of medical/autopsy/corpse photography, death journalism, serial killers, formalihide babies, war/shock accident/crime scenes, human intersection, murder art show, lobster boy, 3D stereo photography hall of horrors, donkey fucker (please no!), strange diseases of the world, amputee lovers, siamese twins, deformed children, amazing Photo Press historical stories, animal deformities, huge Hideshi Hino art gallery, book guide and interview, ALARMA! photo gallery, Trevor Brown art gallery, corpse photography, columns and features on and by Kiyotaka Tsurisaki (Death, Hardcore Works, Too Negative, Ultra Negative, Billy, etc.), Father Yod (YaHoWha 13) record guide, Medical Atlas by Naruhiko Tanaka, lots of noise record reviews by Masami Akita (Merzbow) inc. Smell & Quim, M.B., Lustmord, Ramleh, Genocide Organ, Richard Ramirez, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Whitehouse, Extreme Hair Stench, Genital Masticator, Traci Lords Loves Noise, Morder, etc., interview with artist Wes Benscoter (heavy metal illustrator for Slayer, Mortician, Kreator, Deceased, Cattle Decapitation, etc) on the occasion of his NG Gallery body painting show, complete Freak book library, and all sorts of other curios from the mondo, bizarro realm. Lots of full colour gore.
Not for the fain-hearted. You'll feel like a shower after.
Very Good copy with dust jacket and obi.
1969, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Leslie Frewin / London
$45.00 - Out of stock
First 1969 hardcover edition of this classic study of killers by Colin Wilson, issued in hardcover by Leslie Frewin in the UK. In A Casebook of Murder "(Wilson) discusses crimes in Britain and Europe, in America and Australia, and breaks down the motives of the killers in an attempt to isolate a common denominator. He draws strongly on psychological and psychiatric authorities and offers new hope for the future, particularly in connection with murders of a violent, sexual nature. He is of the opinion - alarming perhaps, but perceptive - that it is 'the ability to discount the victim that distinguishes the murderer from the rest of us', and he illustrates this vividly by discussing among many others, the cases of: Sawney Bean and his strange cannibalistic family, Thomas Arden of Faversham; Catherine Hayes; the rape of Sarah Woodcock; Andrew Bichel, the Bavarian ripper; Lacenaire, the notorious French murderer; Anna Zwanziger, whose creed was 'poison is my truest friend'; Thomas Cream; Jack the Ripper; 'The Red Spider'; Jesse Pomeroy; Hickock and Smith; The Cannock Chase and the Moor murders. (In) its scope, (this) is a finely-worked tapestry that records the struggle of centuries between the forces of good and evil and demonstrates how the comparative security of the citizen today has slowly been constructed."
Colin Wilson (1931—2013) was an English existentialist philosopher-novelist. He also wrote widely on true crime, mysticism and the paranormal, eventually writing more than a hundred books.
VG copy in VG dust jacket with light wear/tanning to cover and pages.
1990, English
Softcover (staple bound), 36 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The FFM Association / Paris
$50.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of Fantasy Film Memory Presents "Shockers" issue no. 1 of the FFM film digest / fanzine, published in France in July 1990, and devoted entirely to Cannibal Holocaust, the controversial cult 1980 Italian exploitation cannibal film directed by Ruggero Deodato and written by Gianfranco Clerici. This English text book is packed with glossy colour and b/w film stills, lobby cards, posters, and on-set photos and other visual documents, accompanying texts and production details. A must for any fan. The "Shockers" series was published in 4 issues between 1990—1991.
Very Good copy.
1981, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 20 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Shochiku / Tokyo
$140.00 - In stock -
Wonderful, very rare Japanese souvenir photo booklet for Faces of Death 2, the controversial straight-to-video 1981 American mondo horror documentary film directed by John Alan Schwartz, the follow-up to 1978's Faces of Death, credited under the pseudonyms "Conan Le Cilaire" & "Alan Black" respectively. Mortuaries, accidents and police work are filmed by TV crews and home video cameras. Faces of Death II contained real footage of a dead body being pulled from under a pier, Guerrilla death squads in El Salvador, napalm bombings in Vietnam, Buddhist self-immolations, the drugging of a monkey, a dolphin slaughter, a train disaster in India, Cambodian patients with leprosy, a death museum featuring Joaquin Murrieta's preserved head, a driver high on PCP and a boxer going down for his “final” count. Much like the PSA Aircraft crash, the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan occurred recently before the film's completion, and was included as well. Heavily illustrated throughout with glossy colour and b/w stills from the film, alongside texts in Japanese about the film, cast and production information.
Very Good copy with light wear.
1973, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 12 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Toho / Tokyo
$90.00 - In stock -
Wonderful, very rare Japanese souvenir photo booklet for Autopsia (Autopsy), a 1973 Spanish Mondo-style docudrama by director Juan Logar about a war correspondent who comes back home and has a spiritual crisis about his own mortality. Surreal fantasy sequences are mixed with graphic real autopsy footage. Heavily illustrated throughout with b/w stills from the film, alongside texts in Japanese about the film, cast and production information.
Very Good copy with light wear.