World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
CLOSED FOR SUMMER.
RE-OPENING 01.02.24
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
Art
Theory / Essay
Architecture / Interior
Graphic Design / Typography
Photography
Fashion
Eros
LGBTQ+
Fiction / Poetry
Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction / Horror
Transgressive / Visceral / Abject
Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle
Film / Video
Painting
Sculpture / Installation
Performance / Dance / Theater
Drawing
Sound / Music
Curatorial
Group Shows / Collections
Periodicals
Out-of-print / Rare
Posters / Ephemera / Discs
Signed Books
World Food Books Gift Voucher
World Food Book Bag
Australian Art
Australian Photography
Japanese Photography
Conceptual Art
Minimal Art
Dada
'Pataphysics / Oulipo
Fluxus
Concrete Poetry
Pop Art
Surrealism
Arte Povera
Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic
Situationism / Lettrism
Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art
Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic
Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées
Furniture
Italian Radical Design / Postmodernism
Textiles
Ceramics / Glass
Counterculture
Protest / Revolt
Anarchism
Socialism / Communism / Capitalism
Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language
Feminism
Fetishism / BDSM
Drugs / Psychedelia
Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
Whole Earth / Crafts
All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2002, French
Softcover, 264 pages, 23.5 cm x 27.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Artha / Saint Etienne
$200.00 - In stock -
First edition of Une Femme Surrealiste — one of the finest reference volumes ever published on the great Czech transgender surrealist Toyen (1902—1980). Edited by noted Toyen authority and exhibition curator Karel Srp, this lavishly illustrated catalogue was published on the occasion of the major retrospective exhibition held June 20 —Sep 30, 2002 at the Musee d'Art Moderne, Saint Etienne, France. Photo illustrated chronology and extensive catalogue of artworks in colour and b/w (149 works — paintings, drawings, lithographs, collages.....) Texts in French.
Marie Čermínová (1902 – 1980), known as Toyen, was a Czech painter, drafter and illustrator and a member of the Surrealist movement. Born in Smíchov, Bohemia, she left home at the age of 16 and worked at a soap factory in Zizkov while putting himself through school. She worked closely with fellow Surrealist poet and artist Jindřich Štyrský, both joining and exhibiting with the Devětsil group in 1923. In the 1920s they travelled to Paris and founded an artistic alternative to Abstraction and Surrealism, which they dubbed Artificialism, returning to Prague in 1928. Toyen's sketches, book illustrations, and paintings were frequently erotic, illustrating the Marquis de Sade's "Justine" under Štyrský's publishing imprint, Edice 69, as well as contributing many erotic sketches to Štyrský's Eroticka Revue (1930–33), published on strict subscription terms with a circulation of 150 copies. Toyen and Štyrský gradually grew more interested in Surrealism. After their associates Vítězslav Nezval and Jindřich Honzl met André Breton in Paris, they founded the Czech Surrealist Group along with other artists, writers, film makers and the composer Jaroslav Ježek. Toyen was one of the few female Surrealists, along with Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington and a handful of others. While Cahun examined the fluidity of gender roles, Toyen dispensed with gender altogether. Toyen often dressed in men's clothing and preferred masculine pronouns, choosing a non-conformist position when it came to gender and sexuality, themes heavily mined in Surrealist art. Forced underground during the Nazi occupation and Second World War, he sheltered his second artistic partner, Jindřich Heisler, a poet of Jewish descent who had joined the Czech Surrealist Group in 1938. The two relocated to Paris in 1947, before the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948. In Paris, they worked with André Breton, Benjamin Péret, and other members of the surrealist movement.
Good copy with knock to bottom spine corner, light age wear.
1969, Japanese
Softcover, 218 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Misaki Shobo / Tokyo
$45.00 - Out of stock
Erotica September 1969, Japan's erotic magazine for bibliophiles, published in the 1960s—1970s by Misaki Bookstore. Each issue densely packed with illustrations, articles, news, and feature stories around the universe of Eros from around the world during a time of great sexual revolution. Covering all manner of sexual customs and subject matter from the arts and literature, film and manga, philosophy and radical politics, Erotica was Japan's leading erotic academic journal, featuring, amongst it's heavy historical and contemporary papers, the cutting-edge of Japanese and international erotic artists, from Hans Bellmer to Toshio Saeki.
Erotica September 1969 is themed "The Situation of Eros".
Good copy, wear/age.
1970, Japanese
Softcover, 250 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Misaki Shobo / Tokyo
$30.00 - Out of stock
Erotica December 1970, Japan's erotic magazine for bibliophiles, published in the 1960s—1970s by Misaki Bookstore. Each issue densely packed with illustrations, articles, news, and feature stories around the universe of Eros from around the world during a time of great sexual revolution. Covering all manner of sexual customs and subject matter from the arts and literature, film and manga, philosophy and radical politics, Erotica was Japan's leading erotic academic journal, featuring, amongst it's heavy historical and contemporary papers, the cutting-edge of Japanese and international erotic artists, from Hans Bellmer to Toshio Saeki.
Erotica December 1970 is themed "The Eros of Theatre: The Aesthetics of Voluptuousness".
Good copy, light wear/age.
1994, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi strip),
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Shincho Sha / Tokyo
$120.00 - In stock -
First 1994 edition of Hair by Kishin Shinoyama, his glossy full-colour photo collection of elegant nudes where the focal point is women's pubic hair, the forbidden fruit of Japanese censorship laws.
Kishin Shinoyama was born in Tokyo in 1940. He began shooting award-winning advertising photography while still a student at Nihon University. After several years with the advertising agency Light Publicity, Shinoyama began working as an independent photographer in 1968. In the decades since, he has taken portraits of some of the most recognized people of our time, including Yukio Mishima, Momoe Yamaguchi, Rie Miyazawa, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. In his Gekisha and Shinorama series, Shinoyama has used the latest technologies to create new modes of expression. His recent digital multimedia project digi KISHIN brings a new perspective to both photography and cinema He has dedicated his practice to exploring intimacy and the human body, as well as documenting his home place of Tokyo. His sensual photographs often depict the body within the architecture of the city or conversely, the inherent sculptural qualities of the naked human form.
Near Fine copy with good obi strip.
1983, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 48 pages, 21 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Art Space Bibudju / Japan
Edition Mibuduki / Japan
$140.00 - In stock -
Rare Japanese book of the illustrated works by the great Czech transgender surrealist Toyen (1902—1980), issued in Japan in 1983, limited to 1000 copies, each hand-numbered. Wrapped in gold foil covers with bottle green obi-strip, this lovely publication reproduces Toyen's illustrations for the books Débris Des Rêves and Le puits dans la tour by Toyen and radical Croatian author Radovan Ivšić's Le Puits Dans La Tour & Débris Des Rêves, and her illustrations for La Forêt Sacrilège by French poet and artist Jean-Pierre Duprey, accompanied by essays by Japanese author Kunio Iwaya and André Breton, from the original French translated to Japanese. Also includes a chronology of Toyen. Texts in Japanese.
Good copy with tanning and some wear to foiled covers/obi.
1982, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 96 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Hama Shobo / Tokyo
$600.00 - Out of stock
Very rare first controversial photo book by Japanese photographer Ikko Kagari, published in 1982 in Tokyo. Kagari made a number of these extraordinary, extremely questionable, surreptitious infrared photography collections in the 1980's—1990's, featuring secret "close-up photography" documenting clandestine sexual activities in public places — groping and upskirt photographs taken on packed Tokyo Metro commuter trains, in nightclubs, on escalators, couples making it in public toilets, parked cars and in parks with infrared strobe techniques reminiscent of Kohei Yoshiyuki's incredible Document Park (the two often featured side-by-side in books and journals). Document Commuter Train is his cult highly sought-after "masterpiece", made most collectible in the West through it's feature in Parr & Badger's "The Photobook: Vol. III". Document Commuter Train is a beautifully produced photo book entirely made up of the infamous rush hour train carriage photography. Cover-to-cover b/w reproductions of Kagari's grainy, blown-out infrared images that blur all lines between voyeur/participant and simulated/real, make for disorientating, sometimes claustrophobic, uneasy viewing. But they are also absolutely stunning, effective photo books that feel as conceptual as they do devious. Kagari's fleeting in flagrante scenes capture erotic desire and criminal impulse engulfed by the soft folds of entangled garment fabrics with stunning technique. He went so far as to publish a how-to book for amateurs! Thankfully the 2000s saw the introduction of women-only carriages on the Tokyo Metro, relegating such expertise to history.
Very Good copy with VG dust jacket.
1994, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Heart Deluxe / Tokyo
Outo Shobo / Tokyo
$400.00 - Out of stock
Very rare photo book by Japanese photographer Ikko Kagari, published in 1994 in Tokyo. Kagari made a number of these extraordinary, extremely questionable, surreptitious infrared photography collections in the 1980's—1990's, featuring secret "close-up photography" documenting clandestine sexual activities in public places — groping and upskirt photographs taken on packed Tokyo Metro commuter trains, in nightclubs, on escalators, couples making it in public toilets, parked cars and in parks with infrared strobe techniques reminiscent of Kohei Yoshiyuki's incredible Document Park *the two often featured side-by-side in books and journals). Chikan Rush (Molester Rush) is entirely made up of the infamous rush hour train carriage photography, and has become one of the most sought after. Cover-to-cover b/w reproductions of Kagari's grainy, blown-out infrared images that blur all lines between voyeur/participant and simulated/real, make for disorientating, sometimes claustrophobic, uneasy viewing. But they are also absolutely stunning, effective photo books that feel as conceptual as they do devious. Including many selections from Kagari's "Document Commuter Train" (1982), as featured in The Photobook: Vol. III, by Parr & Badger, Kagari's fleeting in flagrante scenes capture erotic desire and criminal impulse engulfed by the soft folds of entangled garment fabrics with stunning technique. He went so far as to publish a how-to book for amateurs! Thankfully the 2000s saw the introduction of women-only carriages on the Tokyo Metro, relegating such expertise to history.
NF copy with VG dust jacket. Only a small pressure mark to the back cover, otherwise Near Fine, beautifully preserved copy.
2005, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 160 pages, 21.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Futami Shobo / Japan
$140.00 - In stock -
Rare, controversial photo book of Ikko Kagari, publisher of a number of these extraordinary, extremely questionable, surreptitious infrared photography collections in the 1980's—1990's, including the controversial coveted classic "Molester Rush" and "Document Commuter Train". This 2005 collection was published by Futami Shobo, collecting his colour and b/w photography from the streets of Shinjuku and Kabuki-cho areas of Tokyo. Candid and voyeuristic, this is the side of Tokyo usually hidden from view — violence, despair, gluttony and perversion — street photography behind the veil. While many are sexual in nature, in the same vein as his earlier photo books documenting clandestine sexual activities in public places, others show various human dramas unfolding on the street, like unauthorised photo journalism capturing the violent and desperate side of Tokyo. Homicide, suicide, gang violence, overdoses and intoxication, homelessness... Human behaviour seldom published. File alongside the works of Kohei Yoshiyuki, Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, and ¡Alarma!.
Very Good—Near Fine copy.
1985, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 60 pages, 26 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gakutokan / Japan
$180.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful 1985 Japanese edition of Georges Bataille's Madame Edwarda, illustrated throughout with all the original illustrations by Hans Bellmer. Madame Edwarda first appeared in Paris under Georges Bataille's pseudonym Pierre Angelique in two small underground editions in 1941 and 1945. It was finally published under Bataille's own name by the publishing house of Jacques Pauvert in 1956. Translated here by Kosaku Ikuta, all illustrations by German artist Hans Bellmer, complete with inserted preface booklet by Georges Bataille and additional insert of publisher's catalogue.
In Madame Edwarda, a man becomes erotically obsessed with an old whore who turns out to be God. Bataille's erotic prose fuses elements of sex and spirituality in a highly personal vision of the flesh. A world of sensation in which only the vaulting demands of disruptive excess and the anguish of heightened awareness can combat the stultifying world of reason and social order. Intoxication and insanity are so carefully delineated by the author that it seems to infect the reader.
"Madame Edwarda's truth consists in confronting us with an obvious scandal that we wouldn't even know where to place. We could incriminate her words: there have never been such rigorous ones; or the circumstances, the fact that Madame Edwarda is a brothel whore, but this, indeed, it could be reassuring; or even that certain details, which must be said to be obscene, are so with a necessity that ennobles them and makes them inevitable, not so much in the name of art, but for a perhaps moral, perhaps fundamental need. (...) That the most incongruous of books, as Georges Bataille defines it in his preface, is also the most beautiful book, and perhaps the most tender, is above all scandalous."—Maurice Blanchot
Very Good copy throughout, light tanning.
1994, Japanese / English
Slipcase (w. obi), corrugated envelope, unpaginated book, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
B-Sellers / Japan
$200.00 - Out of stock
First book edition of Scene of Death, a rare 1994 death photo collection, published by B-Sellers in Japan only, compiled by Noriaki Nakagawa, Hitomi Komukai, and Yoichi Shihata. An elaborate and beautiful production of the macabre. Housed in an illustrated slipcase with illustrated obi-strip and further within a stamped, labelled, corrugated envelope, housing the bound book containing 64 monochrome photographic plates reproducing images from "Atlas der Gerichtsmedizin", an absolutely fascinating collection by Weiman / Prokop, first published in 1963. Atlas der Gerichtsmedizin was originally a serious German scientific reference book for criminal investigators and those in the medical field — a photo book scrapbook of thousands of images of graphic human death scenes — suffocation and strangulation, drowning and death by water, death by burning and electrocution, crimes of passion, abuse and neglect, and more. In turn, this visual opus became a bible of reference imagery to a wave of musicians, artists and authors during the industrial avant-garde, from Throbbing Gristle to Paul Buck to Atrax Morgue. This meticulous and unique Japanese offering further influenced many Japanese artists in the 1990's.
"We believe the scenes of death is, in one sense, the most erotic of human nature. It is at the time of death that man no longer can attempt to control his inner self and therefore the real self appears vividly. Here we have opened the doors to a topic that is usually not only hidden but also shut out of the minds of man. Please share our excitement and take a glance into the world of hidden eroticism"—Scene of Death blurb.
Very Good copy throughout. some edge wear and damage to obi strip, light tanning to box.
1994 / 1995, Japanese / English
2 Vol. set, hardcovers (w. corflute envelope slipcases) in box, 196 + 182 pages, 32.5 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sequoia / Tokyo
$500.00 - Out of stock
"I dedicate this book to all lives"
Very rare, highly collectible cult classic two-volume death photo book series, SCENE Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, published in 1994 and 1995 in Japan only. A lavish production, with both heavy books printed in hardcover filled with high-quality reproductions of anonymous, uncredited corpse photography, seemingly sociopolitical photo-journalism of human massacre stripped of text/language as a confronting stream of graphic images in conceptual photo book form. SCENE presents an unwavering, unapologetic exploration of a world usually hidden from view — the dead and death. Not for the faint of heart. Compiled by Kunio Shimizu and Yoichi Shibata for publisher Hirofumi Nagashima, each book is housed in elaborate button-and-tie-bound corflute envelopes, Vol. 1 in black, Vol. 2 in silver. Select plates have been featured in the pages of Kotaro Kobayshi’s underground publications TOO NEGATIVE and ULTRA NEGATIVE from the same period.
This extra special copy was issued as both volumes together in publisher's printed box with seldom seen single promo sheet included for each book (inserted into each book). The ultimate complete edition of this underground photo classic. HEAVY in every sense.
Both books 1990's dead stock with only standard storage wear from button-bind pressure to envelopes/wear to button metal, box with yellowed tape seal (opened) and general storage wear/age.
2012, English / German
Softcover, 104 pages, 20.3 x 24.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Walther König / Köln
Collection de l'Art Brut / Lausanne
$120.00 - Out of stock
Scarce out-of-print monograph on the work of Morton Bartlett, one of only a couple of books on the artist, published by Collection de l'Art Brut Lausanne and Walther Koenig in 2012 and quickly sold out.
When the freelance photographer and graphic designer Morton Bartlett (1909–1992) died at the age of 83, his relatives found 15 chests among his possessions. Each chest contained a half-life-size doll and its accessories: 12 girls and three boys, a wardrobe of hand-sewn clothes, black-and-white photographs of each doll as well as countless studies and archival materials. Bartlett began designing these dolls in the mid-1930s, studying anatomy books and histories of costume, and learning to sew and mold with clay to make them as true to life as possible. Each doll entailed a huge amount of labor, taking up to a year to complete; Bartlett created costumes and wigs for each one and then staged them in lifelike scenarios and photographed them, documenting a family he had never had and creating a body of work that would remain unexhibited during his lifetime. The third installment in the Bahnhof Museum’s series on outsider artists, this volume examines Bartlett’s extraordinary lifelong obsession.
Edited and with foreword by Udo Kittelmann, Claudia Dichter. Text by Lee Kogan.
As New copy.
1990, French
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 24 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Centre National Des Arts Plastiques / Paris
$200.00 - In stock -
First edition of the comprehensive Pierre Klossowski catalogue raisonné published on the occasion of the major retrospective exhibition of his work held in Paris in 1990-1991 at CNAP. Profusely illustrated in colour and b/w with Klossowski's wonderful works, texts throughout by Catherine Grenier, Bernard Blistene, Claude Ritschard, Pascal Bonitzer, Marie-Dominique Wicker, Franco Cagnetta, André Masson, and Pierre Zucca (in French), a densely illustrated catalogue raisonné spanning his work dated 1952/53 through to 1990 (many not seen elsewhere), biography, exhibition history, and much more. Still the most in-depth book on Klossowski's oeuvre to date.
Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001) was a significant and influential philosopher, writer, translator and artist who befriended Georges Bataille and formulated an original stance on many theological issues, as well as the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade. His first novel, Roberte, ce soir, appeared in 1954 as a limited edition containing six of his own erotic illustrations, after he rejected drawings by his younger brother, the painter Balthus. Following the encouragement of Robert Lebel, Andre Masson and Alberto Giacometti, Klossowski held his first exhibition in Paris in 1956, and subsequently produced numerous life-size drawings of erotic scenes imbued with mythological, allegorical and philosophical connotations. By the 1970s, he had won the acclaim of such eminent thinkers as Maurice Blanchot, Michel Butor, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Felix Guattari. Of Klossowski, Gilles Deleuze once said, "That bodies speak has been known for a long time."
Very Good in Very Good dust jacket.
1997, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 154 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$240.00 - In stock -
First 1997 edition collection of "The Early Works" by the Japanese master of Ero guro Toshio Saeki, published by Treville in 1997 and long out-of-print. An extensive collection of incredible works gathered from his first major book in 1970, his acclaimed 1971 Red Book, the panel-by-panel replication of an early Saeki manga story, and much more. Texts by Akira Uno, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Timothy Leary.
Toshio Saeki (1945—2019) was an illusive Japanese illustrator and painter, and icon of 1970s Tokyo counterculture, known for combining Japanese folklore, Yōkai spirits and elements of Western art with his own sophisticated aesthetics to create a unique, sensational world of eros, dark humour, and horror. Given the title “Erotic Engineer” by Timothy Leary, Saeki's provocative art broke all sexual taboos, questioned Japanese ideology and traditional views on love, desire and gender roles. Saeki’s surgically-precise graphic work is closely related to the Japanese cultural phenomenon ‘Erotic, Grotesque, Nonsense’ (ero, guro, nansensu).
“Toshio Saeki conjures death with a pen”—Shūji Terayama, 1969.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket and obi, light wear.
1994, Japanese
Softcover in die-cut, foiled slipcase, 162 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$180.00 - In stock -
First edition of the rare, long out-of-print first major monograph on Japanese artist Yoshifumi Hayashi, published only in Japan in this slipcased edition in 1994. Profusely illustrated throughout, chronologically surveying self-taught Hayashi's work from his mid-1970s De Chirico-inspired sci-fi-scapes quickly evolving into his life's-work of grotesque, disembodied eroticism rendered masterfully in graphite. All the artist’s deepest and darkest paranoias, fetishes, and obsessions are laid bare here, tracing the development of various themes and subjects throughout in a delirium of convulsing legs, breasts, vulvas, intestines, brains and modernist architectural interiors. This book is a must for anyone interested in Hayashi's work. Accompanying texts by Roger Borderie, Gilbert Bellquet, Issei Sagana, Hiroshi Fujita. Also includes a rare portrait of the reclusive Hayashi.
Contemporary Japanese erotic artist Yoshifumi Hayashi (b. 1948, Fukuoka, Japan) dropped out of Chuo University Department of Philosophy in 1972, moving to Paris in 1974, where he began to produce pencil drawings through self study. At first his main influence was the metaphysical world of De Chirico, but soon his focus shifted to the lower half of the female anatomy. Exhibiting and publishing his drawings in France in the late 1970's, Hayashi gained a cult following for his dark explorations of fetishized female physiology and mutating genitalia, rendered masterfully in pencil. Often mentioned in relation to the likes of Hans Bellmer, H.R. Giger, and even David Cronenberg, Hayashi's drawings were featured in specialist fetish magazines, and director Walerian Borowczyk even made a film in 1980 of the artist at work, yet still little is known about Hayashi, who continues to work and exhibit internationally.
Very Good copy with Good slipcase with some general wear.
2014, Japanese / English
Hardcover, 96 pages, 15 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Atelier Third / Tokyo
$90.00 - In stock -
First hardcover edition of 'Le Principe de la Constitution' by Yoshifumi Hayashi, published in 2014 and now out-of-print. ‘Eroticism is to establish order, or in other words the principle of constitution, and not to destroy’ Yoshifumi Hayashi says. This latest collection of self-taught Hayashi's masterfully rendered obsessive visions of grotesque, disembodied eroticism continue his unique and highly original exploration of graphic art. Profusely illustrated throughout, this book follows-on from the comprehensive "La Jeune Marieè d'un Materialiste Enceinte de Cerveaux" monograph (mid 1970s-mid 1990s) illustrating Hayashi's pencil work throughout the 2000s. Includes a very rare essay by Hayashi, who first studied philosophy, discussing his theories about science and eros, tracing his childhood interest in astronomy through to his understanding of eroticism through dynamics.
Contemporary Japanese erotic artist Yoshifumi Hayashi (b. 1948, Fukuoka, Japan) dropped out of Chuo University Department of Philosophy in 1972, moving to Paris in 1974, where he began to produce pencil drawings through self study. At first his main influence was the metaphysical world of De Chirico, but soon his focus shifted to the lower half of the female anatomy. Exhibiting and publishing his drawings in France in the late 1970's, Hayashi gained a cult following for his dark explorations of fetishized female physiology and mutating genitalia, rendered masterfully in pencil. Often mentioned in relation to the likes of Hans Bellmer, H.R. Giger, and even David Cronenberg, Hayashi's drawings were featured in specialist fetish magazines, and director Walerian Borowczyk even made a film in 1980 of the artist at work, yet still little is known about Hayashi, who continues to work and exhibit internationally.
As New copy including Hayashi promotional postcard.
1989, English
Softcover, 32 pages, 19 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Arts Club of Chicago / Chicago
$150.00 - In stock -
Seldom seen, rare exhibition catalogue, Paintings, Works on Paper and Notebooks 1970—1988, published in conjunction with the exhibition at The Arts Club of Chicago, December 3 1998—January 23 1999. Illustrated throughout in colour and b/w with essays by Kathy Cottong and Michael Klein. Also contains extensive chronology of Thek's life. This archive copy includes an inserted multi-page, stapled gallery press-release, plus a review clipping from the Chicago Reader of the exhibition.
VG—Near Fine copy.
1989, English / German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 160 pages, 30 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Delano Greenidge Editions / New York
$160.00 - In stock -
First 1989 hardcover edition of this seminal and now rare English-language Palermo monograph, published by Delano Greenidge Editions, New York. This gorgeous book, personally our favourite Palermo book, is profusely illustrated throughout in colour and black and white, surveying this great German artist's entire career, accompanied by texts from Franz Dahlem, Evelyn Weiss, Max Wechsler, and a bibliography by Aurel Scheibler, plus list of exhibitions. Includes many portraits, installations and studio photographs, also. Edited by Erich Maas and Delano Greenidge. All texts are in both English and German.
Blinky Palermo (1943—1977), born Peter Schwarze, Heisterkamp his foster surname, was a German abstract painter. He adopted his outlandish name in 1964, during his studies with Bruno Goller and Joseph Beuys at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf between 1962 and 1967, in reference to Frank "Blinky" Palermo, an American Mafioso and boxing promoter who managed Sonny Liston. In 1969, Palermo moved to Mönchengladbach and set up a studio he would share with Imi Knoebel and Ulrich Rückriem. After a stay in New York in the early 1970s, he moved into Gerhard Richter's former Düsseldorf studio. Over the course of his 14-year artistic career Palermo tirelessly probed the limits of abstract painting. Having begun his brushwork on more traditional surfaces, he shifted his activity to less conventional supports, experimenting with diverse materials and forms, exploring the relationships that can exist between the wall and the space delimited by the painting. Under Beuys, he became increasingly interested in the organized spatial relationship between form and colour, a polarity which is manifest throughout the rest of his oeuvre. In the mid 1960s, Palermo moved away from conventional rectangular canvases and increasingly opted for surfaces such as the circle, triangle, cruciform, totem pole and even the interior walls of buildings. Between 1964 and 1966, Palermo produced a small series of paintings on canvas in which he experimented with constructivist principles of order. Over the course of his short life, Palermo participated in more than seventy exhibitions worldwide, including Documenta in 1972 and the Venice Biennale in 1975. Blinky Palermo died in 1977, aged 33, during a trip to the Maldives.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket, bumping to hardcover corners not affecting pages, light wear and tear to DJ.
2024, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 64 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Published by
Secession / Vienna
$50.00 - In stock -
Already out-of-print catalogue published to accompany Tishan Hsu’s exhibition recent work 2023 at Secession. The publication contains an essay by Laura Brown that reconstructs the creative techniques he has devised and honed over the past four decades and turns the spotlight on the early 2000s as a watershed moment when digital image editing programs suddenly produced within seconds many of the effects Hsu had anticipated. In a conversation with Martha Schwendener, Hsu dwells on the early years of his career and discusses his great theme: the fusion of body and technology in an increasingly virtual world.
When the artist learned that the new publication model introduced by the Secession in 2023 calls for freely accessible digital copies of all books complementing the printed version, he was inspired to toy with the relation between the analog book and its digital twin. To do so, he took process-oriented approaches that are integral to his creative practice such as the interpenetration of analog and digital techniques and adapted them to the book medium. Hsu’s art harnesses printing processes to translate digitally generated or edited forms into analog media, where they undergo further manipulation, sometimes iteratively, as in a feedback or echo.
In the book, the artist mirrors this process-based dimension of his work with a mutating series of eight pictures created for the downloadable version, whose title image changes over the course of the exhibition’s duration not unlike in the computer-generated special effect known as morphing. The intervals at which the cover changes are progressive rather than static. The final image is released on the exhibition’s closing day and remains in place as the “infinite” version. Meanwhile, the play with the cover image also turns collecting into a game—the printed dust cover, which exists only in the analog version, features all eight motifs, like a preprinted sleeve for collectible cards, complete with the exact period during which they can be downloaded from the web. An aficionado who wants the full set—almost like a collector buying up NFTs—will need to download the digital book on the specified dates.
1992, Japanese
Hardcover (clothbound), 96 pages, 18 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Mole / Tokyo
$320.00 - Out of stock
Rare first edition of one of the greatest kinbaku photo books ever published, Bind by Akio Fuji. Published in 1992 by Mole Gallery, Tokyo, to accompany Fuji's exhibition of the same name, Bind is now a classic photo book of masterful aesthetic bondage photography, featuring the rope work of Chimo Nureki, gloriously reproduced in lush black and white plates bound in silver-foiled cloth hardcovers. Exquisite compositions capturing the two artists at the height of their powers, and an important book and exhibition for bringing the world of kinbaku to the recognition of the fine art world in Japan the 1990's.
Akio Fuji (b. 1959) is a pioneer of bondage photography in Japan, founding the legendary bondage enthusiast circle "Kinbiken" in Tokyo in 1985 with rope master Chimuo Nureki (who also produced the magazines Kitan Club and Uramado), developing into the cult kinbaku bulletin Kinbiken Communications, with core contributions by both Fuji and Nureki, Katsuya Kasui, Masami Akita (Merzbow), Yuri Sunohara, Asoji Muroi, Akira Minomura, and other members of the circle. The object of the group was to study the beauty of bondage, observing the techniques of master Nureki through a membership with one of the most distinctive facets of the club being that the bondage women participate as members themselves. Says Nureki, “One of the main reasons I started this circle was to provide a facility for masochistic women, who are often misunderstood and therefore despised.” Kinbiken Communications remain one of the most desirable kinbaku publications of this period, the photography from which is showcased here in Akio Fuji's debut collection, featured heavily in Masami Akita's compilation of the “History of Bondage Photography in Japan”.
Fine copy.
1972, Japanese
Softcover, 34 pages, 20 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Hanashi-no-Tokushu / Tokyo
$100.00 - In stock -
First edition of Japanese photographer Yoshihiro Tachiki's photo book "Erotica Larotica", published in 1972. This book is one of the early masterpieces of Tatsuki — a unique collaboration between the Austrian painter Dina Larot (b. Maria Elisabeth Lebzelten in 1942), a student of Kokoschka best-known for her paintings and drawings of "women" in Austria, and photographer Yoshihiro Tatsuki, best known for his photography of "women" in Japan. It consists of playful portraits and nudes of Lalo herself and her friends lavishly dressed and undressed photographed by Tachiki in Vienna, paired with SM-lesbian erotic drawings and paintings by Larot throughout, plus a few photographs from a Crazy Horse show in Paris in the mix.
Tatsuki was born into a family that operated an photographic portrait studio. While at Tokyo junior College of Photography, he exhibited photographs of his family at the Fuji Photo Salon. After graduation, he began working as a photographer at Ad Center under the art direction of graphic designer Seiichi Horiuchi. Tatsuki’s name entered the limelight when he was just 26 years old with the publication of "A Fallen Angel", an astonishing 56 pages feature of his photographs shots for Camera Mainichi. Since starting as a freelance photographer in 1969, he has worked on the front lines of the advertising, magazine, publishing, and motion picture industries. He has published a number of celebrated photo books on female subjects and is best-known for works such as GIRL, EVES, Private (Mariko Kaga), Aoi Toki, My America, and Portrait of Family.
Very Good copy in dust jacket. Light cover wear and pinch to spine, one page with crease to top corner.
1972, Japanese / English
Softcover (w. french folds and fold-out spreads), 160 pages, 22.8 x 29.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ad Angen / Japan
$120.00 - In stock -
First 1972 edition of this erotic anthology from three important and provocative Japanese photographers from the time they were creating their most inspired work. Tatsuki is famous for his books Eves, Private (Mariko Kaga) and Girl (from the famous Chuo Koronsha series). Kanoh is famous for his books Shunga and the banned Fuck. Ichimura is famous for Salome and Come Up. All of these seminal works in Japanese photography were published in 1970 or 1971, as was this book, a collection that includes moments from some of the aforementioned works. The title indicates the uniting theme of the book - couples (and groups) in erotic scenes. Experts of the nude, the invited photographers here express Ukiyo-e's spring paintings through their own photographic visions of sexuality. Saturated and hypnotic, these psychedelic and dreamlike collections are joyous and occasionally confronting, surrealistic and occasionally grotesque, all vividly reproduced throughout with many gate-fold spreads. A great book.
Very Good copy.
1990, Japanese / French / English
2 volumes in cardboard slipcase (w. exhibition flyer); volume 1 68 pages (colour ill.) volume 2 196 pages (b/w ill.), 22.5 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Sezon Museum of Art / Tokyo
$100.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful, visually exhaustive two-volume boxset catalogue for the traveling exhibition in Japan in 1990—1991, held on the centenary of Man Ray's birth.
Each volume of this Japanese publication on the American artist Man Ray serves as a wonderful index of his incredible lifetime of work. Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in 1890 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Man Ray was a renowned representative of avant-garde photography in the 20th century and is considered as the pioneer of Surrealist photography. A major contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal, Man Ray produced major works in a variety of media including drawings, objects and films, but considered himself a painter above all. Volume One compiles many examples of his diverse non-photographic works, reproducing his many paintings, drawings, objects, prints and book editions in full colour. Volume Two (the heavier of the two volumes) focuses on his prolific photographic work, copiously illustrated with a huge catalogue of beautifully reproduced monochromatic works throughout his entire career — Paris, America, Dada, Surrealism and beyond — showcasing his significant contribution to the evaluation of photography as a form of modern art.
Accompanying texts by Merry Foresta, Lucien Treillard, Toshiharu Ito in Japanese, French and English. Primarily in Japanese language. Includes full biography, bibliography and catalogue of all works.
Good—VG copy. Light wear/age/foxing to slipcase and covers otherwise Very Good in general.
1991 exhibition flyer at Seibu laid in.
1970, English
Softcover (folio w. 37 loose leaf prints), 25.5 x 17.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
State University of New York Press / New York
The Art Gallery / Albany
$30.00 - Out of stock
Observation, a Magazine of the Visual Arts, Spring 1970, edited by Betsy Morris and Norah Wylie and published by SUNY at Albany/ The Art Gallery, Albany, New York. Observation is a visual survey of 37 (b/w w. one colour) prints of students and faculty at The State University of New York at Albany in 1970. Photography, ceramics, painting and print making, featuring the artworks of Shirley Penman, Helen Broc, Steven Lobel, et al.
Very Good copy with light general wear.