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:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
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
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 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. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or 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.
1971, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 200 pages approx, 21 x 15.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sogo Tosho / Tokyo
$140.00 - In stock -
From the very rare six-volume collector's set of legendary SM Kinbaku anthology photo books edited by Japanese rope master, photographer, writer and editor, Ueda Seishiro, published by Sogo Tosho in 1970-71. Each volume features a striking cover by Ran Akiyoshi, one of the era’s most iconic artists and is filled with hundreds of photographs and nothing more. Released during the golden age of Japan’s kinbaku culture, this wonderful series documents the visual and subcultural evolution of SM photography in the 1960s through to 1970 with beautiful production and print quality, gloss colour and gravure b/w, these are some of the most important Japanese kinbaku photo works edited together by a modern master and young friend of the godfather of the movement, Seio Ito.
Alongside his associates Ito Seiu Ito, Dan Oniroku, Hiroshi Urado and Shigeru Kayama, Ueda Seishiro was at the forefront of SM publishing and modern kinbaku arts in Japan, as an editor and groundbreaking contributor who worked with magazines such as Kitan Club, Yomikiri Romance, Fuzoku Soushi, Fuzoku Kitan, SM PLAY, and True Stories and Secret Records, whilst serving as tight-binding advisor for Japanese Pink Films in the 1970s and 80s. Ueda was responsible for the rope-work in a special issue of Yomikiri Romance in the summer of 1952, regarded as ”the first commercial publication completely dedicated to shibari/kinbaku photography (…) a groundbreaking event in SM publishing”—The Beauty of Kinbaku.
Very Good copy, some buckling to block from storage, light age/wear. VG dust Jacket.
1971, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 200 pages approx, 21 x 15.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sogo Tosho / Tokyo
$140.00 - In stock -
From the very rare six-volume collector's set of legendary SM Kinbaku anthology photo books edited by Japanese rope master, photographer, writer and editor, Ueda Seishiro, published by Sogo Tosho in 1970-71. Each volume features a striking cover by Ran Akiyoshi, one of the era’s most iconic artists and is filled with hundreds of photographs and nothing more. Released during the golden age of Japan’s kinbaku culture, this wonderful series documents the visual and subcultural evolution of SM photography in the 1960s through to 1970 with beautiful production and print quality, gloss colour and gravure b/w, these are some of the most important Japanese kinbaku photo works edited together by a modern master and young friend of the godfather of the movement, Seio Ito.
Alongside his associates Ito Seiu Ito, Dan Oniroku, Hiroshi Urado and Shigeru Kayama, Ueda Seishiro was at the forefront of SM publishing and modern kinbaku arts in Japan, as an editor and groundbreaking contributor who worked with magazines such as Kitan Club, Yomikiri Romance, Fuzoku Soushi, Fuzoku Kitan, SM PLAY, and True Stories and Secret Records, whilst serving as tight-binding advisor for Japanese Pink Films in the 1970s and 80s. Ueda was responsible for the rope-work in a special issue of Yomikiri Romance in the summer of 1952, regarded as ”the first commercial publication completely dedicated to shibari/kinbaku photography (…) a groundbreaking event in SM publishing”—The Beauty of Kinbaku.
Very Good copy, some buckling to block from storage, light age/wear. VG dust Jacket.
1970, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 200 pages approx, 21 x 15.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sogo Tosho / Tokyo
$140.00 - In stock -
From the very rare six-volume collector's set of legendary SM Kinbaku anthology photo books edited by Japanese rope master, photographer, writer and editor, Ueda Seishiro, published by Sogo Tosho in 1970-71. Each volume features a striking cover by Ran Akiyoshi, one of the era’s most iconic artists and is filled with hundreds of photographs and nothing more. Released during the golden age of Japan’s kinbaku culture, this wonderful series documents the visual and subcultural evolution of SM photography in the 1960s through to 1970 with beautiful production and print quality, gloss colour and gravure b/w, these are some of the most important Japanese kinbaku photo works edited together by a modern master and young friend of the godfather of the movement, Seio Ito.
Ueda Seishiro was a (younger) friend of Itoh Seiu.
Alongside his associates Ito Seiu Ito, Dan Oniroku, Hiroshi Urado and Shigeru Kayama, Ueda Seishiro was at the forefront of SM publishing and modern kinbaku arts in Japan, as an editor and groundbreaking contributor who worked with magazines such as Kitan Club, Yomikiri Romance, Fuzoku Soushi, Fuzoku Kitan, SM PLAY, and True Stories and Secret Records, whilst serving as tight-binding advisor for Japanese Pink Films in the 1970s and 80s. Ueda was responsible for the rope-work in a special issue of Yomikiri Romance in the summer of 1952, regarded as ”the first commercial publication completely dedicated to shibari/kinbaku photography (…) a groundbreaking event in SM publishing”—The Beauty of Kinbaku.
Very Good copy, some buckling to block from storage, light age/wear. VG dust Jacket.
2013, Japanese
Softcover, 212 pages, 28.2 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Amana / Japan
$160.00 - In stock -
First edition of this wonderful collection of Japanese photographers that captured 1970s Tokyo, now out-of-print. In the world of fine art photography, post-war Japanese photography is continuing to gather attention. Many Japanese photographers were active specifically during the large cultural and political development of the 70s as the country experienced rapid economic growth. At the time, new styles of expression with a strong focus on the individual viewpoint were beginning to develop, which were distinct to the social documentary photography prior to that. This also coincided with the development of photography within the fashion and advertising field, reflecting a period where the works of many unique photographers and styles began to grow. A careful selection of 160 bodies of works by 9 prominent photographers of the time, each individually portraying the excitement and rapid growth which symbolised the era. Taiji Arita, Eikoh Hosie, Daido Moriyama, Masatoshi Naito, Hajime Sawatari, Issei Suda, Yoshihiro Tatsuki, Shuji Terayama, Katsumi Watanabe.
Very Good copy with good dust jacket.
2002, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket) in slipcase, 600 pages, 25 x 19 cm
Signed and numbered edition of 300,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Getsuyosha / Tokyo
$480.00 - In stock -
"There is no place for which words such as "melting pot" or "purgatory" are more suited than the town of Shinjuku...."—Daido Moriyama
Signed and numbered very first, limited edition, first Japanese printing of Daido Moriyama's 'Shinjuku', his collection of stark b/w, full-bleed photographs shot in Tokyo's shinjuku district, one of the photographer's most famous, and published in this incredible 600 page volume in 2002 by Getsuyosha, Tokyo. Re-printed in many various editions, this is the true 2002 first premium print-run of only 300 copies and published in Japan. This special edition was followed by the regular Japanese edition w/o slipcase/sign, then followed by the Nazraeli Press US re-print of 500 copies mimicking this edition that is often considered the first appearance. Numbered on the slipcase (this copy being no. "51 / 300") and signed by Daido Moriyama with his characteristic silver ink to the first photographic endpaper, this copy also includes the preserved fold-out poster / booklet insert (50 x 36 cm) with text by Moriyama in Japanese and English. One of his finest.
"The current town of Shinjuku shows sign of becoming a near future city. The real and virtual, pleasure and pathos are entangled night and day, and this becomes a huge stadium where the gathering crowds wander, holding their raggle taggle desires. There is no place for which words such as "melting pot" or "purgatory" are more suited than the town of Shinjuku.... When we try lining up in a row cheap words stained with finger marks such as chaos, deluge, greed, vulgarity, vice, indecency, etc., every single one of them epitomizes Shinjuku, and I unintentionally start laughing. This is also an impressive point, as no matter how or where you search in the world, you wouldn't be able to find a city that is this weird. From the eastern JR train line, in other word this side where it seems like a stew in simmering and boiling, to the phantom landscape of high rise buildings that seem like a mirage over the west side, Shinjuku vividly exhibits all the shadiness, toughness, and considerable disconsolateness that a city has, like a truly unfathomable mathematical functional relationship, like a modern Babylon. I and Shinjuku, as well as my attraction to it and shooting photos of it, must have some kind of similar character somewhere."—Daido Moriyama
Very Good copy in Good slipcase. Well preserved book in DJ, with a single spine crease, binding solid, crisp book. Slipcase with light wear and marking, closed splitting.
2020, Japanese
Hardcover, 350 pages, 19 x 13 cm
Signed by Moriyama,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography / Tokyo
$290.00 - In stock -
Signed, first edition of this wonderful, now out-of-print and hard to come by, compact and sturdy publication designed by Satoshi Machiguchi and published to accompany the large-scale retrospective exhibition of Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama, “Moriyama Daido’s Tokyo: Ongoing”, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, June 2 – September 22, 2020.
Printed on warm paper and packed cover-to-cover with full-bleed reproductions of all the works in the exhibition, starting with his iconic "Tights" photographs and the repetitive image of the lips inspired by Warhol from his "Nippon Gekijo Shashincho / Japan, A Photo Theater", sampling some of his most recognisable early works, the book focuses on the theme of Tokyo seen through the never-restless lens of the Japanese master photographer. In addition to a foreword by Daido Moriyama, the book also contains essays by writer Akiko Otake and photo critic Yoshiaki Kai, shedding light on Moriyama’s photographic practice and his legacy (all texts included in Japanese and English translation).
"Known as a master of snapshots, Moriyama Daido, one of Japan’s preeminent photographers, began his career in the 1960s. His grainy, high-contrast style, which came to be described as “are, bure, boke” (rough, blurry, out of focus), sent shockwaves through the photography world. Over the years, Moriyama has held large exhibitions at museums in a host of different countries, and received countless international photography prizes, including the 2019 Hasselblad Award, and today, 55 years after his debut, he remains active at the forefront of the art world.
Based on the theme of “ongoing,” this exhibition focuses the city of Tokyo as seen through the constantly sprinting Moriyama’s lens in his latest color and monochrome works."
A wonderful collection.
Near Fine copy, signed "Daido" in silver metallic marker to the first page.
1985, Japanese
Softcover, 290 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Sanwa / Tokyo
$450.00 - Out of stock
"People often talk about humanity and humanism, but what makes humans decisively different from animals is that they betray, deceive, and destroy others. Humanity means being cruel."—Masaaki Aoyama
Super rare, first and only issue of cult magazine of erotic obscenity, Witches' Sabbath ("Super Pervert, End of the Century, Abuse History"), published in 1985 by Sanwa Publications as a special edition of SM Mania and edited by Masaaki Aoyama (1960-2001), a legendary cult writer, editor and pioneer in the genre of "Kichiku" (cruel) publishing who had a major influence on Japanese subculture in the 1980s and 1990s.
In 1995, after a prolific career in underground publishing, Aoyama edited the first issue of the "brutal" subculture magazine "Dangerous No. 1," which sparked a huge craze for bad taste culture in Japan, with the opening introduction declaring "There are no taboos when it comes to fantasies!". Ten years earlier, at 25 years old, he edited Witches' Sabbath, a call to "Destroy All Orders", a magazine devoted to "Decadence, Ultra-Abnormality, and Maltreatment"; Aoyama's unique, devilish manifestation of a particular convergence of subcultural 1980s Tokyo — punk and industrial music, splatter horror films, underground manga, SM publishing, and occultism. "The Worst Truth of the 20th Century".
Aoyama was deeply attracted to the culture of monsters, the world of the abnormal, the cruel and dark impulses of human-kind. His publishing ventures centred around his fascination with destructive and socially maladjusted people, perversions, social taboos, "freaks" and subjects turned against public order and morality. Profusely illustrated throughout with colour photo galleries, Aoyama, with contributors including Merzbow's Masami Akita, horror manga artists Suehiro Maruo and Hideshi (Guinea Pig) Hino, manga critic and activist Shinichiro Kurimoto, Hisao Nakano, Mongoose Nagayama, Dan Takasugi, Ken Hirukogami, and others, present features on all manner of heterodox culture, everything from an illustrated guide to corpse photography, splatter horror movies, scatology, how-to seppuku/harakiri (Japanese ritualistic suicide by disembowelment), horror manga (new artworks by Maruo, Hino, comic by Jimmie Morita, and others), infant mania, drugs, necrophilia, Industrial Records (Throbbing Gristle, Monte Cazazza, SPK, etc,), Zeitlich Vergelter, Ron Geesin, sadistic crime history, deformities, Georges Bataille, devil pregnancy kinbaku, sorcery, bestiality, witch hunting, SM readers confessions, the latest in fetish publishing, D-Cup extravaganza (big breast video and magazine publishing), and much more. A special Nazi issue was planned for the next issue, but the magazine was discontinued after this first issue.
An important publication in the history of Japan's "Kichiku" (cruel) publishing. Cover artwork by Ran Akiyoshi.
Not for the faint of heart. Strictly mature audiences only.
From the Editor's notes: "[...] That's because my original path was escapist fairy tales, and whether it was manga, photography, or bookmaking, what I wanted to depict was the world of children. There's no doubt that the purest things and madness are side by side... What is abnormal and what is normal? In this day and age when everything man has created is being torn down and all boundaries are being removed, humans are being led astray by the enormous concepts they have created. Is Witches' Sabbath just a pornographic book? Is Masaaki Aoyama just crazy? It has only just begun."
Masaaki Aoyama (1960-2001) was pioneer of the Japanese underground publishing scene. When he was in the third grade of elementary school, his father bought him a copy of Hiroshi Minamiyama's book "Supernatural Mysteries," which sparked his interest in the supernatural and the occult. Although he never studied, he displayed his prodigy qualities from an early age whilst simultaneously becoming addicted to masturbation. His intense quest for knowledge and perversion continued into his adult life. A self-proclaimed hedonist, Aoyama was hailed as a rare genius editor that had a profound, almost traumatic impact on people. Aoyama openly discussed and pursued a wide range of specialised topics, from drugs, lolicon, scat, and freaks to cult movies, progressive rock, punk, techno, the occult, heretical thought, and the spiritual world. He worked prolifically, editing and writing articles for mini-comics, books and magazines such as Hentai, Hey! Buddy, Billy, Witches' Sabbath, Philiac, Eccentric, amongst a seemingly endless list of fringe "pervert" publications that proliferated after the emergence of vending machine books in the 1970s. In 1992, Aoyama wrote Japan's first practical drug manual, "Dangerous Drugs," a "bible for junkies" which sold over 100,000 copies. In 1995, he edited the first issue of the "brutal" subculture magazine "Dangerous No. 1," which quoted the words of cult guru Hassan I-Sabah: "There is no truth. Everything is permitted." The magazine, which was packed with an exhaustive range of deviant, perverted, and bad taste content, became a huge hit, selling over 250,000 copies in total, sparking a craze for "Kichiku" (cruel) publishing in Japan in the late 19th century.
"No taboos in delusions"—Dangerous No. 1 introduction.
The trend of consuming things that are generally viewed as objects of loathing or pity from a mondo perspective was accelerated all over the world during the nihilist 1990's, but it was particularly popularised in Japan. From V-Zone video culture to comic books like Garo and the works of Kei (Takashi) Nemoto, Suehiro Maruo and Hideshi Hino, to subculture magazines that stimulated spectacle-based curiosity, crime and voyeurism, such as GON!, BUBKA, Sekimatsu Club, TOO NEGATIVE, End of the Century, Weekly Murder Casebook, Bessatsu Takarajima. Around the same time, Aoyama was diagnosed with multifocal posterior pigment epitheliopathy (MPPE), an extremely rare eye disease affecting around 50 people nationwide in Japan, which later became one of the factors that led him to become interested in spiritual matters. Aoyama, the mastermind behind this new genre of "Kichiku" (cruel), bad taste publishing, became disillusioned with the vulgar taste that was being mass-produced as a result of the boom. Aoyama felt the genre lost its substance as a counterculture or literary movement and had been absorbed into popular culture, the historical lineage of erotic underground publishing had become dissolved with the boom of extreme content on the internet. Without moralising, he had stared directly into the abyss. The dark truths he sought fed his own deviancy and addictions. Aoyama became depressed and reclusive. In 1997, Sakakibara Seito, an avid reader of Danger No. 1, committed the Kobe child murders. This led to bookstores removing all bad taste subculture books from their shelves. In 1999, "The Complete Works of Aoyama Masaaki” was published, marking the end of "Kichiku" publishing. Aoyama sought the light and pursued a new theory of happiness related to the spiritual world based on psychoneuroimmunology, molecular biology, and Buddhist resignation. In an interview with the magazine BURST, he declared, "the brutal genre is no longer fresh. From now on, I'll go for the soothing genre." He hanged himself at his home in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture on June 17, 2001, at the age of 40.
Near Fine collector's copy!
1994, Japanese
Softcover, 210 pages, 15 cm x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tom Shobo / Japan
$120.00 - Out of stock
The rare inaugural issue of Too Negative (No. 1 October 1994). Now rare and highly collectible, Too Negative, the "Forbidden Picture Book", was a visceral and visually explosive glossy cult arts magazine that reflected the gory-depraved-beyond salvation-bad taste expressions visible in international subculture at the height of 1990s underground publishing, a time when art was pushing the limits of taste and morality. Edited solely by legendary Japanese publisher and gallery owner Kotaro Kobayashi and published by Tom Publication Inc. between 1994—2000, each thick, glossy volume takes on the aesthetics of a vibrant fashion magazine in the great Japanese "mook" format (the magazine book) packed cover to cover with themes of Eros and Thanatos, such as fetishism, erotica, medical/autopsy photography, death journalism, Japanese bondage, grotesque and neo-surrealist art, crime scene photography, tattooing/irezumi, piercing, and all things of the mondo, macabre, bizarro realm. Frequent collaborators and featured artists were Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, Joel-Peter Witkin, Trevor Brown, Kiyoshi Ikejiri, to name a few. With a Japanese publishing lineage that may be found in earlier bounding-pushing periodicals such as the 1920s erotic grotesque magazine Hentai Shiriou (Pervert Documents), Tasuhiko Shibusawa’s incredible 1960s avant-garde journal Le Sang Et La Rose, or Fiction Inc’s SALE2 journal published from 1980—mid 1990s, Too Negative, and affiliated periodicals such as ORG, Spiral, Schizo, etc. took their subjects to another level of extremism, even by Japanese standards.
Not for the faint hearted.
This issue, Too Negative No. 1 October 1994, features the corpse/death photography of Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, fetish photography of Kiyoshi Ikejiri, Trevor Brown artwork, AIDS body theory by Keiji Nakayama, SM photography by David Pearson, Japanese big girl nude portraits by photographer Yurie Nagashima, Yasumasa Yonehara photography, hermaphrodite masterbation, antique Japanese hermaphrodite genital studies and various early medical drawings, erotic assemblage, medical/anatomy photography, you name it.
Very Good copy.
1994, Japanese
Softcover, 210 pages, 15 cm x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tom Shobo / Japan
$140.00 - Out of stock
Too Negative No. 2 December 1994, featuring the first publication of corpse photographer Kiyotaka Tsurisaki.
Now rare and highly collectible, Too Negative, the "Forbidden Picture Book", was a visceral and visually explosive glossy cult arts magazine that reflected the gory-depraved-beyond salvation-bad taste expressions visible in international subculture at the height of 1990s underground publishing, a time when art was pushing the limits of taste and morality. Edited solely by legendary Japanese publisher and gallery owner Kotaro Kobayashi and published by Tom Publication Inc. between 1994—2000, each thick, glossy volume takes on the aesthetics of a vibrant fashion magazine in the great Japanese "mook" format (the magazine book) packed cover to cover with themes of Eros and Thanatos, such as fetishism, erotica, medical/autopsy photography, death journalism, Japanese bondage, grotesque and neo-surrealist art, crime scene photography, tattooing/irezumi, piercing, and all things of the mondo, macabre, bizarro realm. Frequent collaborators and featured artists were Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, Joel-Peter Witkin, Trevor Brown, Kiyoshi Ikejiri, to name a few. With a Japanese publishing lineage that may be found in earlier bounding-pushing periodicals such as the 1920s erotic grotesque magazine Hentai Shiriou (Pervert Documents), Tasuhiko Shibusawa’s incredible 1960s avant-garde journal Le Sang Et La Rose, or Fiction Inc’s SALE2 journal published from 1980—mid 1990s, Too Negative, and affiliated periodicals such as ORG, Spiral, Schizo, etc. took their subjects to another level of extremism, even by Japanese standards.
Not for the faint hearted.
This issue, Too Negative No. 2 December 1994, features the corpse/death photography of Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, fetish photography of Kiyoshi Ikejiri, Kotaro Kobayashi, Setsuko Chiba, the artwork of Trevor Brown, photography of Nancy Burson, doll art by Katan Amano, loads of vintage medical, autopsy and death photography, tattoo and piercing fetish, freak postcards, sex dolls, and much more.
Very Good copy with some cover/extremities wear.
1994, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), unpaginated, 23 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kasakura / Tokyo
$45.00 - In stock -
First 1994 softcover edition of Japanese photographer Keiji Fukunaga's collection, TOKYO SWEET, Tokyo Amateur Girl Story, published by Kasakura, Tokyo.
"It's my first experience.
Girls who appear here are all amateurs.
Some are into SM, but not all of them.
For some it is their first time undressing for the camera.
On a street corner in Tokyo,
Fatefully, I met Keiji Fukunaga and fell in love (I was picked up by him),
A once-in-a-lifetime, sweet experience
That's what I decided to do."
Filled with colour and b/w photography of (as the subtitle and model quote states) amateur photography of young amateur Tokyo women, from playful nudes in public to more explicit fetish and SM studio shoots.
"Photography is love and memory"
VG/VG dust jacket.
1995, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and obi-strip), 200 pages, 27 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Libro Port Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$90.00 - In stock -
Scarce, first hardcover edition of this wonderful 1995 Araki photo album. From cover to cover this book is entirely comprised of Araki's date-stamped photographs taken in the year 1995, presented chronologically and in rich colour. Araki documents all his favourite subjects — women, nudes, flowers, still-lifes, Japanese city details and his beloved cat Chiro, all in amazing panoramic format. Robert Frank and Nan Goldin even make appearances. The landscape format of this hardcover book allows for the images to be grouped into selections of two per page (four per spread) or a glorious single shot spanning a spread, making a jam-packed collection of almost 400 photographs. One of his best collections.
Very Good copy with Good dust jacket, light foxing to end blanks, missing obi.
1980, Japanese
Softcover (w. metallic dust jacket), 324 pages, 25.6 x 15.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Byakuya Shobo / Tokyo
$180.00 - In stock -
First 1980 edition of Nobuyoshi Araki's Pseudo-Reportage, over 300 pages of Araki's photographic reportage spanning 1977—1979, and one of more uncommon and best Araki books. Wrapped in silver and pink metallic dust jacket, Pseudo-Reportage is akin to his famed Tokyo Luckyhole, a visual record tracing Araki's movements through the Tokyo nightlife (mostly) of the late 1970's and a tour to the haunts of New York City in 1979 on the occasion of a group exhibition at the International Center of Photography — JAPAN: A SELF PORTRAIT, in which Daido Moriyama, Eikoh Hosoe, Tomatsu, Fukase also participated. Lots of sex clubs, bars, restaurants, and lots of women — the Japanese Empress, female kickboxers, girl glam rockers, hostesses, girls, girls, girls. Explicit, profound, charming, Araki.
"With an epigraph, Photos are jokes on society. The high ([Japan's] Empress) and the low (female kickboxers) are combined; Araki's great wit in full display."—Kōtarō Iizawa
Good copy in Good—VG dust jacket, with only very light general edge wear/spine sunning. Book block is cocked from storage, foxing to blank preliminaries.
2001, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), unpaginated, 25.5 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Shueisha / Japan
$90.00 - In stock -
First 2001 hardcover edition of this special book edition published by Weekly Playboy in Tokyo, a collection of nude photography by Japanese photographer Noboru Nakamura of "Beautiful Women from far Away Countries". Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Czech, Slovakia. Full colour gloss reproductions with many photographs of each model.
Fin copy in Fine dust jacket.
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.
1986, Japanese
Hardcover (cloth-bound in slip-case), 152 pages, 36.5 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Chikuma Shobo / Tokyo
Comme des Garçons / Tokyo
$900.00 - In stock -
One of the most beautiful and sought after fashion photo-books ever published. First 1986 hardcover, slipcased edition of Comme des Garçons 1981—1986. A document of early 1980s Comme through the iconic images of Arthur Elgort, Hans Feurer, Eddy Kohli, Peter Lindbergh, Steven Meisel, Paolo Roversi, Oliviero Toscani, and Bruce Weber.
Since the inception of Japanese fashion label Comme des Garçons in 1969, founder Rei Kawakubo applied a particular aesthetic to every aspect of Comme des Garçons, extending her vision to the company's packaging, furniture, interior design, graphic design, and publishing, including a selection of some of the fashion world's most visually compelling and challenging books and printed materials.
This wonderful and very iconic collection of photographs presents Rei Kawakubo's groundbreaking, innovative designs from an exciting period of Comme des Garçons history, between 1981 and 1986, as photographed by some of the most important fashion photographers of our time, including Arthur Elgort, Hans Feurer, Eddy Kohli, Peter Lindbergh, Steven Meisel, Paolo Roversi, Oliviero Toscani, and Bruce Weber, among others.
This gorgeous and rare clothbound volume, housed in original printed cardboard slip-case, perfectly captures a very important and exciting moment in the history of fashion, and is considered one of the most-collectable and prized fashion photo-books to come out of the 1980s.
Very Good-Fine copy preserved in Very Good cardboard slipcase with only light tanning / light wear.
2010, English
Softcover, unpaginated, 22.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
PowerHouse / New York
$30.00 - In stock -
With The Night Is Still Young, Los Angeles-based, Japanese photographer Tomoaki Hata returns to his roots—the underground club scene of Osaka's gay, nightlife district. Filled with intimate images of the radically—creative drag queens who performed at various venues in the city from the late 1990s through the present, this book is a peek into the underbelly of modern Japan.
Hata occupies a much-deserved place in the ranks of the great Japanese photographers—on par with the likes of Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki—yet he achieved this rank not by following the example of these greats, but via the presentation of his own unique view of a slice of Japanese culture that otherwise remains largely undocumented. Gay life and culture in Japan remains mostly secretive, and tends to take place within the safe confines of gay bars and gay districts that are many times hidden in plain view within the entertainment districts of major urban centers. A passionate and intimate portrayal of the gender-bending performers as they cavort, both on and off the stage, Hata exposes this elusive subculture for the entire world to see. The results are campy and combustible images of drag performers going full tilt. Glitter, glamour, sequins, and seediness are all on display, up-close and unrestrained.
Including an essay on Hata's photographs-and the world they examine—The Night Is Still Young captures and contextualizes drag culture in Japan at the turn of the century, and is the ultimate primary-source document of this otherwise obscure scene.
1996, Japanese
Softcover, 30 bound postcards, 15.5 x 11.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Little More / Tokyo
$480.00 - In stock -
Very rare early book of portraits of Tokyo teenagers by leading Japanese photographer Takashi Homma (b. 1962 in Tokyo, Japan). This special publication features around 30 selected photographs of Homma's iconic and very influential early 1990's photography bound into one volume in the form of thick perforated postcards. These images of Tokyo teens, along with images of their bedrooms and Shibuya / Harajuku street surrounds, are emblematic of Homma's work of the period, known in the West through Purple magazine, etc. Following in the spirit of Provoke photographers such as Araki, Moriyama, and Nakahira, Homma created a new photographic expression for Tokyo at the end of the century. Homma's photography would become a great influence on the fashionable 1990's girly photo boom of Hiromix and Yurie Nagashima, etc.
Fine—As New copy, all postcards still bound, vinyl cover sticker still attached as issued.
1995, Japanese
Softcover, 80 pages, 25 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Little More / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
Scarce first book by leading Japanese photographer Takashi Homma (b. 1962 in Tokyo, Japan). Babyland, published in 1995, was released in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name at Parco Gallery, Tokyo, launching the career of one of Japan's most influential and acclaimed photographers. The book collects Homma's photographs taken between 1993 and 1995, including his Tokyo Teens series and portraits of Kim Gordon, Mike Kelley and Nan Goldin, amongst others. A beautiful book of Homma's distinctively subdued, atmospheric photography that created a new photographic expression for Tokyo at the end of the century.
Very Good—Near Fine copy, complete with booklet insert and publisher's inlaid promotional materials. Text is a dialogue between Kyoko Okagaki and Homma
1981, Japanese
Softcover (w. vinyl dust jacket + pin-up), unpaginated, 28 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Byakuya Shobo / Tokyo
$300.00 - In stock -
"Bite me. Hate me. Bine me. Fuck me.
Please whip me more strong. One, sir. Two, sir. Three, sir. Hmm ah ha...."
—from the back cover.
Seldom seen, remarkable 1981 Japanese photo book by little known Japanese photographer Tetsuji Shimizu — an immersive exploration of the gay scene in San Francisco in 1980, brilliantly designed by Teruhiko Yumura (King Terri, Terrible Terri, etc.)! Rare even in Japan.
Published by Byakuya Shobo, this glossy, vinyl jacket-bound photo book is similar in format to Seiji Kurata's "Flash Up," published around the same time. While visiting New York, Shimizu was astounded by the sights of Christopher Street, the epicenter of LGBT culture. He traveled to the West Coast through word of mouth and immersed himself in the gay culture there, capturing the night-life of Castro and Folsom Streets with his camera — the leather daddies, the bondage dungeons, the bars, and back at the apartments. The impact of the images was so great that it inspired Shimizu to become a photographer. This is such a unique book that Nobuyoshi Araki said, "As I looked through this photobook, I wanted to become a subject myself."
The book also includes a fold-out pin-up, a chapter of intimate black and white close-up erotic scenes, polaroids and Kodachrome slide photo albums documenting the daily lives of friends in the SF scene — the boyfriends, the queens, the bears, fetish shops, sex toys, poppers and wardrobes, a chapter of reproductions of sex toy catalogues illustrated by the great San Francisco illustrator Rex, plus wild erotic artworks from Martin/Hottman/Teruhiko Yumura, master of the punk manga movement and the heta-uma illustration aesthetic.
Very Good copy in original publishers vinyl jacket. As common with old Japanese books preserved in these original plastic dust jackets, they shrink with age and here it has caused the back cover to partially crease.
1990, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi strip), 269 pages, 13 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ota Shuppan / Tokyo
$200.00 - In stock -
Rare first Japanese edition of Nobuyoshi Araki's most controversial book, and cited by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger (in The Photobook Vol.1) as Araki's best and most famous work. Includes original publisher's obi-strip issued with the first 1990 printing. Tokyo Lucky Hole is Araki's intimate document of Japan's sex industry in full flower. Before Shinjuku's infamous red-light district was closed in 1985, the Japanese photographer made this obsessive documentation of its every aspect: the pleasure-seekers and providers, street scenes, performances, peep-shows, parlours, parks, dungeons. Tokyo Lucky Hole reveals the core of Araki's art: the desire to create a portrait of Tokyo without the niceties (and prudishness) of convention. Through mirrored walls, bed sheets, bondage and orgies, this is the last word on an age of bacchanalia, infused with moments of humor, precise poetry, and questioning interjections. Text by Nobuyoshi Araki. Design by Katsumi Komagata.
Nobuyoshi Araki was born in Tokyo in 1940. Given a camera by his father at the ripe age of twelve, Araki has been taking pictures ever since. He studied photography and film at Chiba University and went into commercial photography soon after graduating. In 1970 he created his famous Xeroxed Photo Albums, which he produced in limited editions and sent to friends, art critics, and people selected randomly from the telephone book. Over the years, his bold, unabashed photographs of his private life have been the object of a great deal of controversy and censorship (especially in his native Japan), a fact that has not fazed the artist nor diminished his influence. To date, Araki has published over 400 books of his work.
Very Good copy with VG obi-strip.
2003, Japanese
Softcover, 160 pages, 24 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Atelier Peyotl / Tokyo
$60.00 - In stock -
"Gothic" Special Feature Issue of cult Japanese underground magazine Yaso, published in 2003, edited by Yuichi Konno and Atelier Peyotl (publishers of Night Vision/Yaso/Peyotl/Wave/Silvester Club...). Heavily illustrated with texts in Japanese with in-depth profiles, interviews with and essays on Trevor Brown, Gottfried Helnwein, Kuniyoshi Kaneko, ero-manga master Keizo Miyanishi, influential Gothic Lolita illustrator Mitsukazu Mihara, Floria Sigismondi, Marilyn Manson, Alice Auaa, loads of "Modern Primitive" material (piercing, body modification, body performance, etc.), and much more...
Near Fine copy.
2004, Japanese
Softcover, 176 pages, 24 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Atelier Peyotl / Tokyo
$60.00 - In stock -
"Doll" Special Feature Issue of cult Japanese underground magazine Yaso, published in 2004, edited by Yuichi Konno and Atelier Peyotl (publishers of Night Vision/Yaso/Peyotl/Wave/Silvester Club...). Heavily illustrated with texts in Japanese with in-depth profiles, interviews and essays on leading artists that work with dolls, including contemporary Japanese masters of doll art, Koitsukihime, Katan Amano, Etsuko Miura, Yoshiko Hori, Yogu, Simon Yotsuya, Ryo Yoshida, Akiyama Mahoko, Mari Shimizu, influential Gothic Lolita illustrator Mitsukazu Mihara, Nori Doi, legendary Czech artist and animator Jan Švankmajer, Polish artist and theatre director Tadeusz Kantor, Japanese photographer Miwa Yanagi, film-maker Floria Sigismondi, Louise Bourgeois, Slawomir Rumiak, Nori Doi, and a fantastic illustrated book guide of doll-related art books and literature, from Mary Shelley to The Surrealists, Hans Bellmer, Ken Katayama, Pierre Mollinier, Makoto Aida, Irina Ionesco, H.R. Giger...
Very Good copy with some wear to cover extremities.
1995, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and obi-strip), 200 pages, 27 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Libro Port Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$120.00 - In stock -
Scarce, first hardcover edition of this wonderful 1995 Araki photo album. From cover to cover this book is entirely comprised of Araki's date-stamped photographs taken in the year 1995, presented chronologically and in rich colour. Araki documents all his favourite subjects — women, nudes, flowers, still-lifes, Japanese city details and his beloved cat Chiro, all in amazing panoramic format. Robert Frank and Nan Goldin even make appearances. The landscape format of this hardcover book allows for the images to be grouped into selections of two per page (four per spread) or a glorious single shot spanning a spread, making a jam-packed collection of almost 400 photographs. One of his best collections.
Very Good copy with Good dust jacket and obi-strip.
1993, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 144 pages, 23 x 31 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Libro Port Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$220.00 - In stock -
Never to be missed, the first 1993 over-sized hardcover edition of Araki's incredible Erotos photo book, our favourite of his books. In this provocative work, controversial and legendary Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki makes a radical departure from his usual portraits and cityscapes, zooming his lens in on his evocative subjects. An exquisitely printed collection of arrestingly primal close-ups of parts of the human body, as well as pipes, fruit, wet sidewalks, flowers, snails—Erotos delves deep into the erotic subconscious. Reproduced in gorgeous glossy duotone full-page bleed, bound in heavy gloss red, foiled hardcovers. A stunning book! Araki at his most surrealist. Highest recommendation.
Nobuyoshi Araki is a prolific Japanese photographer who has produced thousands of photographs over the course of his career. He became famous for “Un Voyage Sentimental” (1971), a series of photos depicting both banal and deeply intimate scenes of his wife and lifelong muse, essayist Aoki Yoko (whom the artist credits for making him a photographer), during their honeymoon. To date the 75 year old has produced 450 photo books and counting. With a repertoire that knows no boundaries, Araki's diaristic style of photography has captured the world around him (his cat Chiro, the people and landscapes of Japan and his travels, flowers, family), though it is Araki’s intensely sexual imagery that has elicited particular controversy and fascination throughout his career. Similarly to Helmut Newton, Araki has often addressed subversive themes — such as bondage in the Japanese style Kinbaku — in his provocative depictions of female nudes. He typically works in black-and-white photography, and his hallmark style is deliberately casual. “Rather than shooting something that looks like a professional photograph, I want my work to feel intimate, like someone in the subject’s inner circle shot them,” he says. Pushing against the world of commercialised photography, he is celebrated for his history of self-publishing and distributing his work, beginning with his Xerox Photo Albums of 1970. Amongst many others, Araki has collaborated with American photographer Nan Goldin and Icelandic musician Björk.
Very Good copy in Very Good dust jacket with small amount of wear and tear.