World Food Books

Good Vibration
Photographs by Tetsuji Shimizu

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

$280.00 - In stock -

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"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.

File under: Teruhiko Yumura Tetsuji Shimizu Rex Byakuya Shobo / Tokyo LGBTQ+ Out-of-print / Rare Japanese Photography Photography Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Counterculture Fetishism / BDSM

Helen In Egypt
Poetry by Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)

1961, English
Softcover, 304 pages, 20.5 x 13 cm
Reprint,
Published by New Directions / New York

$44.00 - In stock -

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The poem is as easy to read as breathing: it could be danced, it could be sung, the clarity of image is so perfect… Tremendous suggestiveness and magnetic force radiate from the scenes… H. D.’s verse has the balance, the amplitude and the clean outlines of a Greek temple.—Nation

The fabulous beauty of Helen of Troy is legendary. But some say that Helen was never in Troy, that she had been conveyed by Zeus to Egypt, and that Greeks and Trojans alike fought for an illusion. A fifty-line fragment by the poet Stesichorus of Sicily (c. 640-555 B.C.), what survives of his Pallinode, tells us almost all we know of this other Helen, and from it H. D. wove her book-length poem. Yet Helen in Egypt is not a simple retelling of the Egyptian legend but a recreation of the many myths surrounding Helen, Paris, Achilles, Theseus, and other figures of Greek tradition, fused with the mysteries of Egyptian hermeticism.

Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961), known as H.D., was an innovative modernist writer whose career encompassed poetry, novels, memoirs, short stories, essays, reviews, translations, and children’s literature. Born in Pennsylvania, she formed lifelong friendships with Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore, and became central to the literary networks of London and Paris after moving to Europe in 1911. Her writing explored the poet’s role, war, ancient cultures and mythology, national and colonial identity, lesbian and queer sexuality, and spirituality. Her marriage to Richard Aldington was strained by World War I, while her lifelong partnership with Bryher became the foundation of a creative and unconventional household that included their daughter Perdita, filmmaker Kenneth Macpherson, and others. Closely connected to figures including Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach, H.D. travelled extensively and drew inspiration from Egypt, Greece, Britain, and America. Through Norman Holmes Pearson, she established an important connection with Yale, where her papers are now preserved, and she influenced younger poets including Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov. Her final years brought renewed recognition, including the 1960 Award of Merit Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters—the first awarded to a woman. H.D. died following a stroke in 1961 and was buried in Bethlehem, where her Moravian gravestone is often adorned with seashells in tribute to her first poetry collection, Sea Garden.

File under: H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) New Directions / New York Poetry LGBTQ+ Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism

Trilogy
by Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)

1973, English
Softcover, 206 pages, 20.5 x 13.5 cm
Reprint,
Published by New Directions / New York

$34.00 - In stock -

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…this ecstasy, ecstasy in language, in beautiful language, is what carries me through the entire trilogy, not only content with her trick…not only content with these high-handed fictions but enchanted with her whole poem, not to say enraptured.—Hayden Carruth, Hudson Review

This reissue of the classic Trilogy, by H. D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961), now includes a new introduction and a large section of referential notes for readers and students, compiled by Professor Aliki Barnstone. As civilian war poetry (written under the shattering impact of World War II), Trilogy’s three long poems rank with T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets and Ezra Pound’s Pisan Cantos. The first book of the Trilogy, published in the midst of the “fifty thousand incidents” of the London blitz, maintains the hope that though “we have no map;/ possibly we will reach haven,/heaven.” Tribute to the Angels describes new life springing from the ruins, and finally, in The Flowering of the Rod––with its epigram, “…pause to give/thanks that we rise again from death and live”––faith in love and resurrection is realized in lyric and strongly Biblical imagery. About Trilogy, Denise Levertov wrote: “. . . H. D. spoke of essentials. It is a simplicity not of reduction but of having gone further out of the circle of known light, further toward an unknown center.”

Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961), known as H.D., was an innovative modernist writer whose career encompassed poetry, novels, memoirs, short stories, essays, reviews, translations, and children’s literature. Born in Pennsylvania, she formed lifelong friendships with Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore, and became central to the literary networks of London and Paris after moving to Europe in 1911. Her writing explored the poet’s role, war, ancient cultures and mythology, national and colonial identity, lesbian and queer sexuality, and spirituality. Her marriage to Richard Aldington was strained by World War I, while her lifelong partnership with Bryher became the foundation of a creative and unconventional household that included their daughter Perdita, filmmaker Kenneth Macpherson, and others. Closely connected to figures including Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach, H.D. travelled extensively and drew inspiration from Egypt, Greece, Britain, and America. Through Norman Holmes Pearson, she established an important connection with Yale, where her papers are now preserved, and she influenced younger poets including Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov. Her final years brought renewed recognition, including the 1960 Award of Merit Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters—the first awarded to a woman. H.D. died following a stroke in 1961 and was buried in Bethlehem, where her Moravian gravestone is often adorned with seashells in tribute to her first poetry collection, Sea Garden.

File under: H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) New Directions / New York Poetry LGBTQ+ Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism

Collected Poems of H.D.
by Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)

1983, English
Softcover, 670 pages, 23 x 15 cm
Reprint,
Published by New Directions / New York

$50.00 - In stock -

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"In the tradition of poems by Yeats, Eliot and Pound, H. D’s verse sequences are richly visionary ‘supreme fictions’…"—Sandra M. Gilbert, New York Times Book Review

The Collected Poems 1912-1944 of H. D. brings together all the shorter poems and poetical sequences of Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961) written before 1945. Divided into four parts, this landmark volume, now available as a New Directions Paperbook, includes the complete Collected Poems of 1925 and Red Roses for Bronze (1931). Of special significance are the “Uncollected and Unpublished Poems (1912-1944),” the third section of the book, written mainly in the 1930s, during H. D.’s supposed “fallow” period. As these pages reveal, she was in fact writing a great deal of important poetry at the time, although publishing only a small part of it. The later, wartime poems in this section form an essential prologue to her magnificent Trilogy (1944), the fourth and culminating part of this book. Born in Pennsylvania in 1886, Hilda Doolittle moved to London in 1911 in the footsteps of her friend and one-time fiancé Ezra Pound. Indeed it was Pound, acting as the London scout for Poetry magazine, who helped her begin her extraordinary career, penning the words “H. D., Imagiste” to a group of six poems and sending them on to editor Harriet Monroe in Chicago. The Collected Poems 1912-1944 traces the continual expansion of H. D.’s work from her early imagistic mode to the prophetic style of her “hidden” years in the 1930s, climaxing in the broader, mature accomplishment of Trilogy. The book is edited by Professor Louis L. Martz of Yale, who supplies valuable textual notes and an introductory essay that relates the significance of H. D.’s life to her equally remarkable literary achievement.

Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961), known as H.D., was an innovative modernist writer whose career encompassed poetry, novels, memoirs, short stories, essays, reviews, translations, and children’s literature. Born in Pennsylvania, she formed lifelong friendships with Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore, and became central to the literary networks of London and Paris after moving to Europe in 1911. Her writing explored the poet’s role, war, ancient cultures and mythology, national and colonial identity, lesbian and queer sexuality, and spirituality. Her marriage to Richard Aldington was strained by World War I, while her lifelong partnership with Bryher became the foundation of a creative and unconventional household that included their daughter Perdita, filmmaker Kenneth Macpherson, and others. Closely connected to figures including Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach, H.D. travelled extensively and drew inspiration from Egypt, Greece, Britain, and America. Through Norman Holmes Pearson, she established an important connection with Yale, where her papers are now preserved, and she influenced younger poets including Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov. Her final years brought renewed recognition, including the 1960 Award of Merit Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters—the first awarded to a woman. H.D. died following a stroke in 1961 and was buried in Bethlehem, where her Moravian gravestone is often adorned with seashells in tribute to her first poetry collection, Sea Garden.

File under: H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) New Directions / New York Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism LGBTQ+ Poetry

Hermetic Definition
by Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)

1972, English
Softcover, 117 pages, 22 x 14 cm
Reprint,
Published by New Directions / New York

$34.00 - In stock -

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With the War Trilogy and Helen of Egypt, these three poems of H. D.’s late phase bring into print the great works of a poet who is of the same order for me as Ezra Pound or William Carlos Williams: the work of an imagination that incorporates boldly the modern consciousness and aesthetic and the traditional, psychoanalytic realism and hermetic visionary experience.—Robert Duncan

H. D.’s (Hilda Doolittle, 1884-1961) late poems of search and longing represent the mature achievement of a poet who has come increasingly to be recognized as one of the most important of her generation. The title poem and other long pieces in this collection (“Sagesse” and “Winter Love”) were written between 1957 and her death four years later, and are heretofore unpublished, except in fragments. We can see now in proper context her fine ear for the free line, and understand why other poets, such as Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan, find so much to admire in H. D.’s work. As in her earlier books, one level of H.D.’s significant poetic statement derives from her intimate knowledge of and identification with classical Greek and arcane cultures; taken together, these elements make up the poet’s own personal myth. Norman Holmes Pearson, H. D’s friend and literary executor, has contributed an illuminating foreword to this impressive collection.

Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961), known as H.D., was an innovative modernist writer whose career encompassed poetry, novels, memoirs, short stories, essays, reviews, translations, and children’s literature. Born in Pennsylvania, she formed lifelong friendships with Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore, and became central to the literary networks of London and Paris after moving to Europe in 1911. Her writing explored the poet’s role, war, ancient cultures and mythology, national and colonial identity, lesbian and queer sexuality, and spirituality. Her marriage to Richard Aldington was strained by World War I, while her lifelong partnership with Bryher became the foundation of a creative and unconventional household that included their daughter Perdita, filmmaker Kenneth Macpherson, and others. Closely connected to figures including Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach, H.D. travelled extensively and drew inspiration from Egypt, Greece, Britain, and America. Through Norman Holmes Pearson, she established an important connection with Yale, where her papers are now preserved, and she influenced younger poets including Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov. Her final years brought renewed recognition, including the 1960 Award of Merit Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters—the first awarded to a woman. H.D. died following a stroke in 1961 and was buried in Bethlehem, where her Moravian gravestone is often adorned with seashells in tribute to her first poetry collection, Sea Garden.

File under: H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) New Directions / New York Poetry Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism LGBTQ+

Seiji Kurata
Flash Up — Street Photo Random Tokyo 1975—1979

1980, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. acetate jacket and obi-strip), 190 pages, 30 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Byakuya Shobo / Tokyo

$580.00 - In stock -

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First edition. A seminal Japanese photo book and instant classic upon release, Flash up is one of the most remarkable photographic excursions into the seedy underbelly of 1970s Tokyo. Kurata (b. 1945—2020), one Japan’s formidable contemporary photographers who’s work is often referenced in the same circles as his "Provoke" teachers Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, won the fifth Kimura Ihei Award in 1980 for this, his first book, his acclaimed collection of photographs of creatures of the night — gangsters showing off their full-length tattoos, youth styling themselves after the Hells Angels, self-professed ultra-nationalists from the notorious Black Dragon Society, transvestites drawing in crowds of men, cabaret girls...

"The photographs of Seiji Kurata are striking for their violence. The viewer must be prepared to be hit by his flashgun along with the subjects. ‘Violence’, in this case, is not necessarily invoked by the scenes of blood-shed; rather, it is Kurata’s sharp-shooting ability to stop the flow of time, capture the moment, draw of details we would otherwise never see, then proffer them up before our eyes. Sometimes our response is to avert our eyes for fear of seeing too much. This is not to say that the images are not exaggerated; for after all, people tend only to see what they want to see. If there are those who find Kurata’s photographs ‘ugly’, it can only be said that he has succeeded in paradoxically pointing the finger at them: You who want to avoid ugliness, he says, this is reality and I have cut it out for you. [...] we must admit that the ugliness apparent in these photographs is our ugliness. Our failure to do so simply invites Kurata to deal us an extra-violent blow with his images."—Akira Hasegawa, from the afterword.

Included in Martin Parr & Gerry Badger, The Photobook, Vol. II.

Text in English and Japanese.

Very Good copy, wear and usual shrinkage to publisher's thick acetate dust jacket, VG original metallic obi-strip, Very Good book, light bump to one corner.

File under: Seiji Kurata Akira Hasegawa Byakuya Shobo / Tokyo Japanese Photography Out-of-print / Rare Photography Crime / Violence Counterculture LGBTQ+ Protest / Revolt Transgressive / Visceral / Abject

Collier Schorr: Writing a Letter, Akerman Ballet, Act 1

2026, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 19.5 x 13.9 cm
Published by The Song Cave / New York

$58.00 - In stock -

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Introduction by Peggy Phelan.

For many years, Collier Schorr has been creating a ballet inspired by Chantal Akerman’s film Je tu il elle. Following the film’s themes of transparency, sexuality, shame, and love, Schorr has directed a piece consisting of videotaped dances in which she includes herself as a character alongside her fellow dancers. “Akerman played herself in Je tu il elle,” she says, “because she knew no actress could be as awkward as she was. I feel the same.”

Incredibly intimate, risky, and questioning aspects of age, gender, and racial norms historically underrepresented in ballet, Schorr wanted “to tell another story, based on the ones that Chantal Akerman had told me, about power and desire and compulsion and essentially free speech in the male-dominated field...” In Writing a Letter: Akerman Ballet, Act 1, Schorr has pulled a large collection of film stills from the first act of this ballet. Published as a stand-alone document of one artist vigorously in conversation with another’s work, it is also an example of the way queer histories can be shared and cared for through adoration, adaptation, and repetition. A heady act of love, in itself.

File under: Collier Schorr Chantal Akerman Chantal Akerman Peggy Phelan The Song Cave / New York Performance / Dance / Theater LGBTQ+ Photography Film / Video

Cruising Pavilion: Architecture, Dissident Sex and Cruising Cultures
Edited by Pierre-Alexandre Mateos & Charles Teyssou

2026, English
Softcover, 432 pages, 23 x 16 cm
Published by Spector Books / Leipzig

$82.00 - In stock -

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Cruising Pavilion: Architecture, Dissident Sex and Cruising Cultures examines the influence of cruising cultures on architecture and urban life, unfolding a typology of spaces produced by sexual – primarily gay – subcultures. From the appropriation of sites such as parks, public restrooms, and streets to purpose-built spaces like sex clubs, bars, and bathhouses, as well as the new form of virtual dérive generated by geosocial dating apps, cruising has subverted the libidinal cartography and use of the modern metropolis.

The book considers these spatial practices through the lens of artistic avant-gardes that have emerged at the intersection of sex, art, and architecture. It follows the eponymous curatorial project initiated by Pierre-Alexandre Mateos, Rasmus Myrup, Octave Perrault, and Charles Teyssou, which traveled from Paris to Venice and on to New York, Fire Island, and Stockholm.

Features Andreas Angelidakis, Monica Bonvicini, Tom Burr, Shu Lea Cheang, Victoria Colmegna, DYKE_ON, General Idea, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Henrik Olesen, Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki Olivo), Hannah Quinlan + Rosie Hastings, Carlos Reyes, Prem Sahib, Jaanus Samma, S H U Í (Jon Wang + Sean Roland), Steven Warwick, Robert Yang, Trevor Yeung, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Andrés Jaque (Office for Political Innovation), Studio Karhard, Etienne Descloux, Horace Gifford, Pol Esteve + Marc Navarro, Madelon Vriesendorp, Samuel R. Delany, Hal Fischer, Gayle Rubin, Joan Nestle, David Wojnarowicz, and more...

Pierre-Alexandre Mateos and Charles Teyssou are a Paris-based curatorial duo. Their recent projects include Paris Orbital, a series of events at the Pinault Collection – Bourse de Commerce, and the Conversations series for Paris+ par Art Basel in October 2023.

File under: David Wojnarowicz Andreas Angelidakis Monica Bonvicini Tom Burr Shu Lea Cheang Victoria Colmegna DYKE_ON General Idea Sidsel Meineche Hansen Henrik Olesen Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki Olivo) Hannah Quinlan + Rosie Hastings Carlos Reyes Prem Sahib Jaanus Samma S H U Í (Jon Wang + Sean Roland) Steven Warwick Robert Yang Trevor Yeung Diller Scofidio + Renfro Andrés Jaque (Office for Political Innovation) Studio Karhard Etienne Descloux Horace Gifford Pol Esteve + Marc Navarro Madelon Vriesendorp Pierre-Alexandre Mateos Charles Teyssou Samuel R. Delany Hal Fischer Gayle Rubin Joan Nestle David Wojnarowicz Steven Warwick Spector Books / Leipzig Art Theory / Essay Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Eros Fetishism / BDSM Counterculture LGBTQ+ Film / Video

Le Sang et La Rose No. 2, 1969

1969, Japanese / French
Softcover, 228 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo

$110.00 - Out of stock

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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 is a masterpiece of the Japanese underground. A groundbreaking, powerful, 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 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. 

Issue no. 2 includes photographic features by Yasuhiro Yoshioka and Yoshihiro Tatsuki, the artwork of French decorator of department store mannequins and surrealist Sunday painter Clovis Trouille, Venus in Furs erotic photo shoot by Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Yokoo Tadanori, Hans Bellmer, Leonor Fini, Alberto Martini, Félicien Rops, Rene Magritte, an incredible feature "Machine for Murder" with art by Hiroshi Nakamura, Tomi Ungerer, Koichi Tanigawa, Osamu Tsukasa, Tatsuo Ikeda, Marcel Duchamp, Seiichi Horiuchi, and others, an article on the erotica of Ukiyo-e with a fold-out colour three panel poster, the fully illustrated museum supplement on Demonology by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa with artworks throughout history, texts by Apollinaire, Burroughs, Mutsuo Takahashi, articles on laws pertaining to homosexuality, Kama Sutra, shoe fetishism, and much more.

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.

Good-Very Good copy. Light general tanning/wear. Some rippling to back cover.

File under: Yoshihiro Tatsuki Clovis Trouille Tadanori Yokoo Yasuhiro Yoshioka Yokoo Tadanori Hans Bellmer Leonor Fini Alberto Martini Félicien Rops Rene Magritte Hiroshi Nakamura Tomi Ungerer Koichi Tanigawa Osamu Tsukasa Tatsuo Ikeda Marcel Duchamp Seiichi Horiuchi Yasuhiro Ishimoto Guillaume Apollinaire William S. Burroughs Georges Bataille Mutsuo Takahashi Tatsuhiko Shibusawa Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo Periodicals Eros LGBTQ+ Art Surrealism Counterculture Japanese Photography Photography Out-of-print / Rare Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Theory / Essay Occult / Esoterica Fetishism / BDSM Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Philosophy Fiction / Poetry Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

Le Sang et La Rose No. 3, 1969

1969, Japanese / French
Softcover, 232 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo

$110.00 - In stock -

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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 is a masterpiece of the Japanese underground. A groundbreaking, powerful, 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 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. 

Issue no. 3 (with cover by Bronzino, 1554) includes full-colour photographic feature by Kishin Shinoyama ("Virgin In Uniform" featuring models/artists Angela Asaoka, Akaji Maro, Yoko Ashikawa) and beautiful Shomei Tomatsu photo feature ("Scoptophilia"), the artwork of the great French cross-dressing painter-photographer Pierre Molinier, texts by Jirō Kawamura, Yumiko Kurahashi, Taruho Inagaki ("Memories of Hemorrhoids or "New Tsurezuregusa"), Akiyuki Nosaka ("Dear Penis, Goodbye"), Minoru Minamihara ("The Mystic Thought of Love in the Case of Jakob Böhme"), Takiji Kobayashi, The Fictitious Garden of Babylon by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, Tsunekazu Murata ("Witch's Ax : Concerning Heresy in Medieval Europe"), translation of Franz Kafka "Metamorphosis" illustrated by Franco Gentilini, recent research on homosexuality by film critic Jin'ichi Uekusa, Kama Sutra, more Gay (Danshoku) Japanese Theater history, Marquise de Blancvilliers by Koji Nakata, and much more.

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.

Very Good copy. Light general tanning/wear.

File under: Kishin Shinoyama Shomei Tomatsu Pierre Molinier Franco Gentilini Yokoo Tadanori Angela Asaoka Akaji Maro Yoko Ashikawa Tatsuhiko Shibusawa Franz Kafka Yukio Mishima Taruho Inagaki Jun’nosuke Yoshiyuki Kôichi Iijima Jûrô Kara Ikuya Kato Minoru Yoshioka Ryûichi Tamura The Marquis de Sade Georges Bataille Andre Pieyre De Mandiargues Jirō Kawamura Yumiko Kurahashi Akiyuki Nosaka Minoru Minamihara Jakob Böhme Takiji Kobayashi Tsunekazu Murata Jin'ichi Uekusa Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Eros Fetishism / BDSM Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals Japanese Photography Surrealism Philosophy Theory / Essay Fiction / Poetry Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Ancient / Medieval / Gothic Art Counterculture Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées LGBTQ+ Occult / Esoterica Photography Sociology / Politics

Le Sang et La Rose No. 1, 1968

1968, Japanese / French
Softcover, 228 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo

$110.00 - Out of stock

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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 is a masterpiece of the Japanese underground. A groundbreaking, powerful, 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 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. 

Issue no. 1 (1968) sets the scene perfectly, opening with Japanese author Yukio Mishima depicted as Saint Sebastian by photographer Kishin Shinoyama in a pictorial feature "Les Morts Masculines", a photographic homage to Georges Bataille that also features the photography of Eikoh Hosoe, Ikkō Narahara, Masahisa Fukase, and Osamu Hayasaki, with models including Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata, actor Akira Mita, author Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, actor Jin Nakayama, playwright Jūrō Kara, and others. Other features include " All Japanese are Perverse" — stories by Japanese writers including Yukio Mishima, Taruho Inagaki, Yutaka Haniya, Shinji Sōya; Henry Miller's letters to Anais Nin; a colour gallery of artwork by Belgian painter Paul Delvaux; articles on Vampire fantasy in the arts (including many original illustrations; Witches (illustrated by James Ensor); Oriental Eros, Ancient Indian poetry; Kama Sutra; female bi-sexuality; the history of gay (Danshoku) theatre in Japan; the full-colour art gallery "Masturbation Machine", featuring avant-garde artists Natsuyuki Nakanishi, Masuo Ikeda, Setsu Nagasawa, Carlos Marchioli, Kuniyoshi Kaneko, Masakazu Horiuchi, Tadanori Yokoo, Koji Suzuki, Tommy Ungerer; the fully illustrated museum supplement "Pain and Pleasure : On Torture" by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa with artworks throughout history; pornographic stories by Guillaume Apollinaire and Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne (who coined the term "Pornographer"); fiction by Pierre Morion (pseudo. André Pieyre de Mandiargues); critic Jin'ichi Uekusa on the controversial writings of Roger Peyrefitte, illustrations by Ernst, Bellmer, Labisse, Fini, Lam, and much more.

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.

Good copy with some spine damage and tanning/wear.

File under: Max Ernst Léonor Fini Felix Labisse Wilfredo Lam Hans Bellmer Paul Delvaux Natsuyuki Nakanishi Masuo Ikeda Setsu Nagasawa Carlos Marchioli Kuniyoshi Kaneko Masakazu Horiuchi Tadanori Yokoo Koji Suzuki Tommy Ungerer Tatsumi Hijikata Tatsuhiko Shibusawa Eikoh Hosoe Ikkō Narahara Masahisa Fukase Osamu Hayasaki Kishin Shinoyama James Ensor Tatsuhiko Shibusawa Jin'ichi Uekusa Roger Peyrefitte Yukio Mishima Taruho Inagaki Yutaka Haniya Shinji Sōya Henry Miller Suehiro Tanemura Guillaume Apollinaire Andre Pieyre De Mandiargues Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne Jūrō Kara Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo Fiction / Poetry Japanese Photography Occult / Esoterica Philosophy Photography Art Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Fetishism / BDSM LGBTQ+ Eros Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals Counterculture Surrealism Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

Plexus 26
July 1969

1969, French
Softcover, 144 pages, 20 x 17.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Planète / Paris

$45.00 - In stock -

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Issue 26 of Plexus, an avant-garde French magazine published in Paris from 1966-1970, created as the companion publication to fantastical realist magazine Planète by prominent figures French journalist and author Louis Pauwels and fantastique fiction author Jacques Sternberg. Born from the ashes of surrealism into it's cultivated counterculture and subtitled "the uninhibited magazine", Plexus blended a psychedelic mix of erotica, fantasy, philosophy, psychedelia, literature, esoterica, filmmaking, science fiction, satirical cartoons and more. Only 37 issues total were published during its short four year run, but it made a big splash, even being prohibited to minors in 1967 after just one year of publication for its “pornographic content.” Each issue featured striking cover artwork by some of the most prominent artists of the period, along with galleries of erotic artworks, historical and contemporary – often seen only in the pages of Plexus.

Plexus, issue 26, July 1969. Cover by Roman Cieślewicz. Features a gallery of art by Claudine Wick, Georges Wolinski, an "unprecedented document on homosexuality" an investigation by Pierre Hahn featuring contributions by Roger Peyrefitte and Michel Butor (writers), Claude Dumezil (psychoanalyst), Daniel Guérin (sociologist), Marc Oraison (priest), Roger Bastide (ethno-sociologist), André Baudry (director of "Arcadie"), Daniel Guérin, Jacques Sternberg, Hair, and so much more.

VG copy, light wear/age.

File under: Roman Cieślewicz André Baudry Claudine Wick Georges Wolinski Roger Peyrefitte Michel Butor Claude Dumezil Daniel Guérin Marc Oraison Roger Bastide André BaudryDaniel Guérin Jacques Sternberg Pierre Hahn Planète / Paris Periodicals Out-of-print / Rare Counterculture Art Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Eros Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Photography Film / Video Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction Occult / Esoterica LGBTQ+ Drugs / Psychedelia

Henrik Olesen
Some Faggy Gestures

2008, English
Softcover (w. poster dust jacket), 176 pages, 21 x 29.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst / Zürich JRP Ringier / Zürich

$400.00 - In stock -

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The "Mnemosyne" of sexual identity.

Rare, first (and only) edition of this wonderful book centred around one of Olesen's master works, published by JRP-Ringier and Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich, and awarded for the “Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2008”. Edited by Heike Munder, with texts by Heike Munder and Henrik Olesen.

Since the mid-1990s, Henrik Olesen (*1967 Denmark, lives and works in Berlin) has used media such as collage, sculpture, and minimalistic spatial intervention to investigate the social construction of identity andits historiography. Through the appropriation of source images and contextual shifts not dissimilar to the method invented by Aby Warburg for his "Mnemosyne Atlas," Olesen probes the associations between
homosexuality and its criminalization in the past, as well as in the present. His archival work sheds light on the enduring existence of spaces for Others, and inscribes homosexual subculture once more into the history of art and culture.

Near Fine copy complete with fold-out poster dust jacket, only light wear to edge folds.

File under: Henrik Olesen Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst / Zürich JRP Ringier / Zürich Eros LGBTQ+ Sculpture / Installation Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Art Out-of-print / Rare

Overexposed: Perverting Perversions
by Sylvère Lotringer

2007, English
Softcover, 213 pages, 23 x 15 cm
Published by Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles

$44.00 - Out of stock

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A report on the administration of deviant desire in specialized clinics that documents the way our postmodern society exposes sexuality to the point of overexposure.

Do you ever get aroused by your patient's fantasies? Do you discover through them something about your own sexuality?
–About my sexuality?
You are exposed to a lot of fantasies.
–Oh yes. Quite frankly, I think it has a satiation effect on me. I've been a sex researcher for ten years, and sometimes I get fed up with it, you know. I talk to people about sex all day long, and it does get to be a drag.
–from Overexposed

The most perverse perversions are not always those one would expect. Originally conceived as an American update to Foucault's History of Sexuality, Overexposed is even more outrageous and thought-provoking today than it was twenty years ago when first published by a commercial publisher. By a strange reversal, rather than being punished, deviant desire now is administrated in specialized clinics under medical supervision. Sexual excess is being turned into a "boredom therapy" claiming to rid patients of their own desires by forcing them to indulge them past the point of satiety. But are perversions still perverse when they are vindicated unconditionally? At once clinical, bewildering, and deeply poignant, Overexposed shows how science can pervert itself by identifying too closely with its object. This insider's exposition of controversial cognitive behavioral methods (carried out with instruments straight out of A Clockwork Orange–penile transducer? pupillometer?) is a hallucinatory document on the manner in which our postmodern society exposes sexuality to the point of overexposure–in order to exterminate it.

"Overexposed is a most remarkable work... A brilliant piece of undercover reporting, from the strangest of strange lands."–J.G. Ballard

"Overexposed is a voyage through hell. A gleaming, air-conditioned, sanitary, and polite hell where a triumphant psychotechnology replaces the old-fashioned shackles of the Law and 'cures' the sex-offender by boring to death his desire. Sylvère Lotringer's account of this charnel house of behaviorisim is deft, witty, and precise."–Joel Kovel

"The sexualization of postwar American culture has produced results that would astonish Freud, Reich, or even Kinsey. Modern techniques of behavior modification now cast doubt on the sources of individual eroticism. Overexposed is an engrossing description of sexual conditioning condoned by the state. A fascinating book."–William Burroughs

File under: SylveÌre Lotringer Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles Theory / Essay Gender Studies / Sexuality Eros Philosophy Psychoanalysis Philosophy / Psychoanalysis LGBTQ+

Erotica Universalis: From Pompeii to Picasso
Edited by Gilles Néret

2011, English
Softcover, 575 pages, 19.5 x 14 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Taschen / Cologne

$55.00 - In stock -

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Wonderfully indecent pictures from famous scribblers and anonymous talents alike (TASCHEN's 25th anniversary special edition)

From the dawn of time, ever since Adam and Eve, all artists of every age – whether the Egyptian, Greek and Roman artists of Antiquity, or more recent famous names as Rembrandt, Courbet, Degas or Picasso – have succumbed to their fantasies, obsessions and libido, and produced erotic works that the censors have taken good care to keep from the public. For Erotica, we surface from the subterranean realms of the museums to enter those of our national and private libraries. Here we discover that not only most of our famous writers, such as Ovid, Aretino, Voltaire, Verlaine or Maupassant, wrote erotic texts that bordered on indecency, but also that great artists like Boucher, Fragonard, Dali or Matisse were inspired to provide suitable illustrations for these naughty books.

Very Good copy.

File under: Agostino Carracci Antoine Borel Marcantonio Raimondi Félicien Rops Aubrey Beardsley Hans Bellmer Pablo Picasso Rembrandt Edgar Degas George Grosz Robert Crumb Albrecht Dürer Michelangelo Buonarroti Parmigianino Rembrandt van Rijn François Boucher Jean-Honoré Fragonard Bernard Picart Gustave Courbet Auguste Rodin Henri Matisse Salvador Dalí Gustav Klimt Egon Schiele Balthus Jean Dubuffet Tom of Finland Gilles Néret Taschen / Cologne Eros LGBTQ+ Out-of-print / Rare Art Drawing Painting Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Fetishism / BDSM Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

Reconsidering Aubrey Beardsley
Edited by Robert Langenfeld

1989, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 508 pages, 24 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by UMI Research Press / Ann Arbor

$60.00 - In stock -

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First 1989 hardcover edition.

Aubrey Beardsley, one of the most fascinating figures of turn-of-the-century European culture, was a prodigious master who continues to defy those who thought his art would remain a prisoner of the 1890s. His acute black and white drawings touched the work of Bakst, Toulouse-Lautrec, Klee, and Picasso, among others, and, a century after his death, he continues to capture the imagination of artists, scholars, and enthusiasts alike.

In Reconsidering Aubrey Beardsley, editor Robert Langenfeld and nine distinguished essayists from England and America — including Brian Reade, lan Fletcher, John Stokes, and Karl Beckson — reevaluate Beardsley's art and writing from a variety of viewpoints, testing new perceptions and qualifying established judgments. Departing from previous studies, Langenfeld and his colleagues offer a broad assessment of this controversial and exciting figure. Topics treated include Beardsley's use of paradox in both art and writing, his influence on modern theatrical style, his attitude toward women, and his view of the artist/illustrator as literary critic. In addi-tion, an annotated secondary bibliography with more than 1500 entries, compiled by Nicholas Salerno, provides for the first time a comprehensive record of the many responses — books, articles, letters — to Beardsley's life and work.

For nearly a century Aubrey Beardsley has eluded the sharpest descriptive and biographical skills of his critics and admirers. As his centennial approaches, Reconsidering Aubrey Beardsley will provide a well-documented, richly illustrated source of knowledge for those interested in literature, theatre, gender studies, as well as art of the fin de siècle.

Robert Langenfeld received his Ph.D. from Arizona State University and is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Since 1983 he has served as editor of English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, and in 1988, as co-publisher, he founded ELT Press and its 1880-1920 British Authors Series.

Dr. Langenfeld has published articles on George Moore, Shakespeare, and Hemingway, and co-authored, with David Eakin, George Moorés Correspondence with the Mysterious Countess. His George Moore: An Annotated Secondary Bibliography was published by AMS Press in 1987. He is also a major contributor to the Hardy and Shaw volumes in the Annotated Secondary Bibliography Series from Northern Illinois University Press. Dr. Langenfeld is currently working on George Mooré's Last Works: The Demise of an Iconoclast.

VG copy in VG dust jacket, preserved under mylar wrap.

File under: Aubrey Beardsley Félicien Rops Robert Langenfeld Aubrey Beardsley Brian Reade lan Fletcher John Stokes Karl Beckson UMI Research Press / Ann Arbor Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Eros Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Art Drawing Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Theory / Essay LGBTQ+ Performance / Dance / Theater

Oriette Wood
Adult Rubbish

2026, English
Softcover (screen–printed + staple–bound), 28 pages, 21 x 14.4 cm
Published by Oriette Wood / Naarm

$60.00 - In stock -

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Adult rubbish is part tractor manual part queer fog. Empowerment slurs meets dark narrative inspired by body horror novels (Dennis Cooper, Derek McCormack) and French graphzines (Henriette Valium, Richard Bruno).

File under: Oriette Wood Oriette Wood / Naarm Eros Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Australian Art LGBTQ+ Fetishism / BDSM

Oriette Wood
FIST

2026, English
Softcover (screen–printed + staple–bound), various sized books bound together, overall 26.5 x 20 cm
Ed. of 15,
Published by Oriette Wood / Naarm

$70.00 - In stock -

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"Fist is a bad trip from the shopping mall of the mind. Beware each screen printed page more glib than the last."

Ed. of 15!

File under: Oriette Wood Oriette Wood / Naarm Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Fetishism / BDSM Eros Australian Art LGBTQ+

Pink Department Store
Edited by Hajime Sorayama

1985, Japanese
Softcover, 260 pages, 19 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Data House / Tokyo

$200.00 - Out of stock

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Possibly the most fun you can cram into 260-odd pages! A now very collectible volume edited by none other than Japanese master of erotic superrealism, Hajime Sorayama, Pink Department Store is a wild book digest of visual sex — straight out of 1985! A compendium of remarkable erotic imagery packed into this one-stop look-book of kink compiled by Sorayama, all reproduced in full-colour on beautiful warm raw paper stock, designed by Hisao Iguchi. From the Tokyo sex clubs, phone-booths and toilet stalls, Shibari photography to pink film posters, x-rated manga to wildlife fornication, leather daddys to dominatrixes, Pink Department Store is a safari through graphic perversion and joyous visual innuendo. Alongside archival material and international works the book generously features an abundance of works by over 100 contemporary Japanese illustrators and photographers, including Aimei Ozaki, Harumi Yamaguchi, Takashi Nemoto, Yosuke Onishi, Suehiro Maruo, Hajime Sorayama, Mizumaru Anzai, Yokoyama Akira, Keiichi Ota, Akira Ishigaki, Kaoru Ueda, Teruhiko Yumura, Yoshiharu Ebisu, Arata Taga, to name but a few. There is also a directory list to contact them all!

Very Good—NF copy in VG original dust jacket and rarely preserved publisher's obi-strip.

File under: Hajime Sorayama Aimei Ozaki Harumi Yamaguchi Yosuke Onishi Suehiro Maruo Mizumaru Anzai Yokoyama Akira Keiichi Ota Akira Ishigaki Kaoru Ueda Teruhiko Yumura Arata Taga Takashi Nemoto Yoshiharu Ebisu Data House / Tokyo Fetishism / BDSM Out-of-print / Rare Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Art Photography Japanese Photography Transgressive / Visceral / Abject LGBTQ+ Pop Art Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Eros Graphic Design / Typography

Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993
by Sarah Schulman

2022, English
Softcover, 752 pages, 21 x 14 cm
Published by St. Martin's Press / New York

$46.00 - Out of stock

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In just six years, ACT UP, New York, a broad and unlikely coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds, changed the world. Armed with rancor, desperation, intelligence, and creativity, it took on the AIDS crisis with an indefatigable, ingenious, and multifaceted attack on the corporations, institutions, governments, and individuals who stood in the way of AIDS treatment for all. They stormed the FDA and NIH in Washington, DC, and started needle exchange programs in New York; they took over Grand Central Terminal and fought to change the legal definition of AIDS to include women; they transformed the American insurance industry, weaponized art and advertising to push their agenda, and battled?and beat?The New York Times, the Catholic Church, and the pharmaceutical industry. Their activism, in its complex and intersectional power, transformed the lives of people with AIDS and the bigoted society that had abandoned them.

Based on more than two hundred interviews with ACT UP members and rich with lessons for today’s activists, Let the Record Show is a revelatory exploration?and long-overdue reassessment?of the coalition’s inner workings, conflicts, achievements, and ultimate fracture. Schulman, one of the most revered queer writers and thinkers of her generation, explores the how and the why, examining, with her characteristic rigor and bite, how a group of desperate outcasts changed America forever, and in the process created a livable future for generations of people across the world.

File under: Sarah Schulman St. Martin's Press / New York LGBTQ+ Protest / Revolt Sociology / Politics Theory / Essay

Enrico David
Domani torno

2026, English / Italian
Softcover, 200 pages, 28 x 24 cm
Published by Castello di Rivoli / Turin Walther König / Köln

$85.00 - In stock -

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Edited by by Marianna Vecellio
Contributions by Marianna Vecellio, Federico Campagna, Polly Staple & Dawn Ades.
Francesco Manacorda in conversation with Enrico David.

Conducive to a growing sense of mystery, Enrico David's art deliberately encourages the development of our tolerance for the unknown. Likened in this volume to a "Picenian surrealist"—rooted in the pre-Roman civilization of his native region—David is an artist who cultivates a special relationship with myth, the hinterland, and the imagination. His works are like messengers—giving enigmatic instructions or acting as magical tools, functioning as means of decoding the unconscious.

Spanning more than three decades, this volume offers a detailed overview of Enrico David's oeuvre, which includes textile works, paintings, drawings, sculptures, and immersive installations, and consistently explores the inner dimensions of the human condition. Works from the early 1990s to the present day are extensively photographed—a comprehensive journey through David's diverse artistic output, it is a frenzied journey through David's wide artistic production shaped by the grotesque and the carnivalesque, by autobiography, theater, and folklore.

Text in English & Italian.

File under: Enrico David Marianna Vecellio Castello di Rivoli / Turin Walther König / Köln Art Sculpture / Installation Painting Drawing LGBTQ+

Pierre Molinier
Cent Photographies érotiques

1979, French
Hardcover (clothbound, gilt), 112 pages, 21.8 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Obliques / Paris

$170.00 - In stock -

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First edition of this beautiful clothbound album of arresting erotic photography by Pierre Molinier (1900—1976), a French painter, photographer and a forerunner of gender performance art and Body Art (Art corporel), published in 1979 by Obliques Images, Paris. Briefly associated with Breton's surrealist group, Molinier spent much of his artistic life working in isolation in Bordeaux, exiled from local and national art scenes. With an introductory essay by French man of letters, playwright, poet, writer, director, journalist, literary critic and photographer, Pierre Bourgeade entitled "La clé est chez le concierge" the rest of the book is made up of some of the most exquisite examples of Molinier's challenging monochrome erotic photography. Cent photographies erotique is the fourth of the collection "Images Obliques" produced by Roger Borderie and Michel Camus.

Pierre Molinier is an unknown of worldwide renown. Every book and every exhibition on the body, gender confusion or sexual excess seems to feature at least one work by this artist whose “genius” was acclaimed by André Breton in a memorable text published in 1956. But the bulk of his work has remained inaccessible. A number of pictures have never been shown and a corpus of only 160 prints has been published. The ensemble revealed by the artist's archives is much more extensive. It includes numerous proofs made to prepare his photomontages and working prints given to friends, but also notebooks and personal letters. Here, precise links emerge between his paintings, photographs and scandalous life. The myth carefully constructed by the artist begins to crumble before the reality of the work.

An inveterate seducer, thoroughgoing fetishist, unrepentant transvestite and inadvertent bisexual, to the very last Molinier remained haunted by two obsessions: pleasure, meaning immediate access to la petite mort, and “leaving a trace in the infinity of time.” This book charts the aesthetic incarnation of his passions. Its 819 photographs, most of them never published before, reveal the method, shed light on the procedures and give details of the origin and alchemy of his latent or composed images. Finally, an exhaustive chronology offers a new biography of Molinier, based on his letters: for it is in the intimacy of these writings that the shaman's heart beats closest to the truth.

In a career shared between the university (fifteen years) and publishing (twenty) Jean-Luc Mercié has written widely on painting and photography. This monograph is his fourth book about Pierre Molinier, the master from Bordeaux.

Born 1900 in Agen (France), Pierre Molinier, surrealistic painter and photographer, a precursor to body art, died in 1976 after having thought out radical and pornographic artwork.

VG copy with light foxing to block edges, initial blanks.

File under: Pierre Molinier Pierre Bourgeade Obliques / Paris Eros Out-of-print / Rare Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Surrealism LGBTQ+ Fetishism / BDSM

Erotic Art: From the 17th to the 20th Century
Edited by Peter Weiermair

1995, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 295 pages, 28 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Edition Stemmle / Zürich Frankfurter Kunstverein / Frankfurt

$65.00 - Out of stock

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Erotic Art: From the 17th to the 20th Century is an exceptional volume showcasing over 200 plates from the renowned Hans-Jürgen Döpp collection, edited by Peter Weiermair and published by Edition Stemmle to accompany an exhibition at the Frankfurter Kunstverein. This is the English language edition. Essays by Georges Bataille, Hans-Jurgen Dopp, Claudia Gehrke, Volkmar Sigusch, Isabelle Azoulay.

The watercolors, drawings and print portfolios presented in this publication are not only outstanding examples of their genre, but also an invaluable documentation of social mores and cultural history from the 17th century onwards. These works of erotic art from all over Europe are part of a major private collection built up over a period of many years. The main focus of this particular selection is on lesser known and rarely published material, open to a wide range of possible interpretation. In tracing the history of taboo, secrecy and prohibition, this book gives its readers access to material previously available only to scholars and specialists.

Very Good copy in VG dust jacket with some light wear to extremities.

File under: D. Taddeo de las Pelotas Tieses Gerda Wegener André Lambert Max Ernst Jules Pascin Rojan Marcel Vertès Suzanne Ballivet André Masson Pablo Picasso Hans Bellmer Eberhard Schlotter Michel Fingesten Willi Geiger Franz von Bayros Archibald Smith Julius Klinger Franz Windhager Laszlo Boris Franz Christophe Walter Klemm Rudolf Schlichter Efwe Ornikleios Guy de Laurence Erich Godal Konstantin Somoff Hans Pellar Alexander Gergely Otto Schoff Eugène Reunier Fritz Erler Otto Rudolf Schatz Marcus Behmer Horst Janssen Martin van Maele Jean Gabriel Domergue Albert Marquet Pipifax Peter Weiermair Georges Bataille Hans-Jurgen Dopp Claudia Gehrke Volkmar Sigusch Isabelle Azoulay Marquis de Sade The Marquis de Sade Edition Stemmle / Zürich Frankfurter Kunstverein / Frankfurt Eros Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Fetishism / BDSM LGBTQ+ Out-of-print / Rare Art

Too Negative No. 8
March 1997

1997, Japanese
Softcover, 208 pages, Softcover, 15 cm x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Tom Shobo / Japan

$140.00 - Out of stock

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Too Negative issue no. 8, March 1997. 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 issue no. 8, March 1997, features the photography the paintings of Manuel Ocampo, the art of Helter Skelter corpse/death photography, the art of Jake and Dinos Chapman, grotesque tabloid news, the art of Pierre Molinier, the art of Damien Hirst, the fetish photography of Hiroshi Yokoi, latex/rubber fetish photography by Uchiyama Kazunori, Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, Kiyoshi Ikejiri, loads of abnormal medical photography, autopsy, anatomical photographic/illustrated, much more.

Mature readers only.

Very Good copy.

File under: Manuel Ocampo Jake and Dinos Chapman Pierre Molinier Damien Hirst Hiroshi Yokoi Uchiyama Kazunori Kiyotaka Tsurisaki Kiyoshi Ikejiri Tom Shobo / Japan Art Painting Sculpture / Installation Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Eros Japanese Photography Photography Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals Fetishism / BDSM Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Counterculture Film / Video Crime / Violence Fashion LGBTQ+