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:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2022, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
Ed. of 50,
Published by
Light of Day Books / Melbourne
$10.00 - In stock -
THE BOYS, 2005–2007 is a 16 page zine of 16 black and white photographs by Konrad Winkler, the fourth in a series of six artist zines published by Light of Day Books, Melbourne, 2022, in an edition of 50 copies.
This series of photographs is from an exhibition at Until Never Gallery in Hosier Lane in Melbourne in 2007. The Boys are artists and writers who dedicated their lives to their passion, art of one kind or another. They didn’t make great careers or a lot of money, but they are the believers, whose lives were determined by this choice earlier in their lives, sometimes with detrimental effects. Portraits without the usual props of studios and easels. Just their heads, and more telling of themselves for that reason.
Konrad Winkler is a Melbourne photographer who has been exhibiting in commercial and public galleries since 1995. Born in Angaston, South Australia in 1948 he studied at Melbourne and New England universities before working in the Northern Territory as a teacher, and later as photographer and graphic artist with the Commonwealth Teaching Service.
His work is often intensely personal, but with a sense of humour to undercut any elements of self importance or maudlin feeling. He has photographed a number of people in extremis, i.e., the artist Julie Goodwin in the depths of postnatal depression, struggling to cope with her career and motherhood. The large photographs of his mother in law, Leila Guymer after the death of her husband are shot on bright, colour saturated Kodak film to show her sense of style and energy and perhaps make the point that death is not the end.
2022, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
Edition of 50,
Published by
Light of Day Books / Melbourne
$10.00 - In stock -
The fish and chip town, Eden/Yuin country 2008-2014 is a 16 page zine of 16 black and white photographs by Ruth Maddison, the third in a series of six artist zines published by Light of Day Books, Melbourne, 2022.
"The fish and chip town, Eden/Yuin country 2008-2014 combines two separate projects. Fishing and timber, both contentious industries, have underpinned the economy of Eden for decades. In a small coastal town of approximately 3,000 people, employment is a complex issue. Rent, food, mortgages, cars, kids, education all must be dealt with. Both industries have been largely cut back for the benefit of the planet since I made these works. But there are downsides for the whole town.
I shot the commercial fishermen portraits on a medium format camera using black & film. The original timber worker images are colour digital files. All the original text was printed but I chose to handwrite for the zine. It’s more intimate."
Ruth Maddison has been documenting domestic, working, and recreational lives since 1976. Her first solo exhibition was in 1979. Since moving from Melbourne to Eden in 1996 her work has expanded to include moving image, large scale prints on fabric, objects in vitrines and early cameraless photography. Her most recent solo exhibition, a large survey show and a new body of work, was in 2021 at Melbourne’s Centre for Contemporary Photography.
2022, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
Edition of 50,
Published by
Light of Day Books / Melbourne
$10.00 - Out of stock
Life Drawing, 2022, a 16 page zine of 16 black and white photographs by Janina Green, the first in a series of six artist zines published by Light of Day Books, Melbourne, 2022.
Janina Green, the daughter of Ukrainians, was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany in 1944. Her family migrated to Gippsland, Victoria in 1949 and she spent her childhood in the small country town of Yallourn North. For twenty years she worked as a secondary school art and crafts teacher. She received a Diploma of Printmaking from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and pursued further studies in fine arts at Melbourne University. J. Green is also an influential photography teacher, lecturing at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne University.
J. Green has been practising photography since the 1980s. Her series ‘Reproduction’ (1986) and ‘Vacuum’ (1993) have made significant contributions to feminist enquiry and photographic innovation. Her constructed, delicately hand-coloured silver gelatin prints place the female body centre stage, inviting the viewer into a critical dialogue about societal roles and gendered performance. Whether it is the bittersweet passing of time expressed in the portrait series of her daughters’ teenage friends, the enduring beauty of unfurling roses, or the loneliness of a country road at night, J. Green’s photographs express the emotional drama underlying everyday moments. By highlighting the complex psychological relationship of the home and the subtle differences between a mother or child’s vision, her photographs draw attention to voices and perspectives underrepresented in art history. Grounded in the beauty of the domestic, she prioritises the perspective of the woman as artist.
Her first exhibition ‘Reproduction’ in 1986 at Artist Space Gallery (Melbourne), reprised in 1987 at the Australian Centre for Photography (Sydney), was pivotal for her career. The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra acquired three works, and the shows’ success allowed her to purchase a large format camera which became central to her practice. The National Gallery of Australia hold works from several exhibitions including ‘Still Life’ (1988), ‘Reproduction’ (1986), and ‘Maid in Hong Kong’ (2009). In 1993 the exhibition ‘Vacuum’ toured nationally. ‘Dark Matters: Selected Photographs by Janina Green’, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne (2016) and ‘Janina Green in Conversation with the Collection’, Castlemaine Art Museum, Victoria (2019-2021) confirm J. Green’s ongoing significance as a feminist photographer.
— Emily Donehue
(https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/janina-green/)
2017, English
Hardcover, 640 pages, 21 x 22 cm
Published by
Edition Patrick Frey / Zürich
$175.00 - Out of stock
Around 1980 in Rome, a small cooperative around film critics Michele Mancini and Giuseppe Perrella produced a mysterious, elaborate and yet effortless looking 600-page book of black-and-white photographs entitled Pier Paolo Pasolini: Corpi e Luoghi (Theorema 1981). According to some reviews of the time this is the most Pasolinian publication to date (Alberto Farrasino), an indispensable tool for future research (Tullio Kezich), not just an illustrated book but a unique model of critique (Adriano Aprà).
With its relentless and yet playful classification of some 2,000 film stills ranged under the categories of “bodies” and “places”, whatever page we turn to, Mancini and Perrella stage an ever-shifting space. With a hidden reference to Walter Benjamin and a correspondingly revolutionary attitude, quotation here is understood as a form of “appropriation”, as a practical use of an archive.
In keeping with the great filmmaker’s credo, Pier Paolo Pasolini: Corpi e Luoghi is a colossal attempt to take this enormous amount of material, in book form, where it wants to go. In the introduction, Mancini and Perrella describe their approach similar to the «analytic field» that they see in the film set: «Through film Pasolini is able to elicit out that sort of unconscious, never talked about code through which in daily life we operate and relate to the world. He makes visible a miscellany of aphasic and hidden practices, a ‹primitive› realm normally concealed from our ‹enlightened› societies.»
Entitled Pasolini’s Bodies and Places and translated by Ann Goldstein and Jobst Grapow, this new quasi-facsimiled edition in English is a first step towards an exploration of the original. Mancini and Perrella introduce their compilation of quoted images with a compilation of texts by Pasolini where he describes his own research of bodies and places for his films. These text were unpublished prior to Corpi e Luoghi. With Stephen Sartarelli’s translations in the present edition they now are fully available in English. (Benedikt Reichenbach, 2017)
The book contains also the original text in Italian / contiene testo italiano.
2021, English
Hardcover, 192 pages, 18.4 x 26 cm
Published by
Atelier EXB / Paris
$99.00 - Out of stock
In 1977, Masahisa Fukase turned his lens toward his cat, Sasuke, spending a year "crawling on my stomach to be at eye level with a cat and, in a way, that made me a cat." A year later, he acquired a second cat, Momoe. Featuring tipped-on cover images, this gorgeously made book is arranged in four chapters, organised around the timeline of Fukase’s life with his cats. They become for the Japanese photographer a boundless experimental field leading to an extraordinary body of work in its technical and visual inventiveness. As so often in his work, these tender images also express the photographer’s subjectivity and his connection to his subject. The cat, a faithful companion who never leaves him, takes the place of his wife, eternal heartache, later represented by the iconic fleeing crows of his masterpiece
Ravens series.
2017, English
Hardcover (w. slipcase), 136 pages, 26.3 x 26.3 cm
Published by
MACK / London
$175.00 - In stock -
Consistently proclaimed as one of the most important photobooks in the history of the medium, Ravens by Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase was first published in 1986 and the two subsequent editions were both short print runs that sold out immediately. This bilingual facsimile of the first edition contains a new text by founder of the Masahisa Fukase Archives, Tomo Kosuga. His essay locates Ravens in Fukase’s wider work and life, and is illustrated with numerous recently discovered photographs and drawings. Fukase’s haunting series of work was made between 1975 and 1986 in the aftermath of a divorce and was apparently triggered by a mournful train journey to his hometown. The coastal landscapes of Hokkaido serve as the backdrop for his profoundly dark and impressionistic photographs of ominous flocks of crows, which are said to serve as an allegory for postwar Japan.
Blind embossed clothbound hardback in a silkscreen printed carton slipcase.
Original afterword by Akira Hasegawa [1986] and a new text by Tomo Kosuga [both bilingual].
2019, English / Japanese
Hardcover, 80 pages, 31 x 23 cm
Published by
MACK / London
$115.00 - In stock -
‘My entire family, whose image I see inverted in the frosted glass, will die one day. This camera, which reflects and freezes their images, is actually a device for archiving death’. – Masahisa Fukase
For three generations the Fukase family ran a photography studio in Bifuka, a small provincial town in the northern Japanese province of Hokkaido. In August 1971, at the age of 35, Masahisa Fukase returned home from Tokyo, where he had moved in the 1950s. He realised that the Fukase Photographic Studio, which his younger brother managed, combined with the growing family members, constituted the perfect subject for a series of portraits. Between 1971 and 1989, he returned regularly and used the family studio, the large-format Anthony view camera and the changing family line-up as the basis for the series. True to his style, Fukase often introduced third-party models and humorous elements to juxtapose the ineluctable reality of time passing and the dwindling family group. He continued the series through his father’s death in 1987, up until the closure of the Fukase studio due to bankruptcy in 1989, and the consequential dispersion of the family.
Family (Kazoku) was released in 1991, and was Fukase’s last book. It begins with a photograph of the family studio and the following 31 images are family portraits made in the studio in chronological order. The book includes an extensive text written by Fukase himself and a modern essay by Tomo Kosuga.
2018, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 20 × 15.5 cm
Published by
RVB Books / Paris
$46.00 - Out of stock
In Bleu Melody, the photographer Tony Frank brings together his complete archive of photographs and documents from 1971 when he shot the cover of Serge Gainsbourg's most mythic album.
Featuring contact sheets, slides and proofs, as well as accounts by Frank that reveal the story behind the photo, the book sheds new light on an image that went on to become famous worldwide.
2001, English / Japanese / German
Hardcover, 126 pages, 23 × 29cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Imex Fine Art / Japan
$100.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful hardbound out-of-print Japanese book of Gerhard Richter's "Atlas", published by Imex Fine Art on the occasion of a major travelling solo exhibition in Japan in 2001.
As well as surveying a selection of Richter's dense "Atlas" work across the bulk this book's full-colour spreads (including a complete cataloguing of all reproduced works and their details), this book includes an overview of Richter's career of works, texts in in both English and Japanese by Helmut Friedel and Sumi Hayashi, a history of Richter's work (reproducing a selection of his paintings and photographs), plus portraits, a bibliography and biography.
Gerhard Richter's Atlas is a collection of photographs, newspaper cuttings and sketches that the artist has been assembling since the mid 1960s. A few years later, Richter started to arrange the materials on loose sheets of paper.
"In the beginning I tried to accommodate everything there that was somewhere between art and garbage and that somehow seemed important to me and a pity to throw away."
Good copy with light buckling from storage, bump to top of spine, otherwise VG throughout. First, only edition.
2000, German
Softcover (staple-bound + CD), 32 pages, 25 x 17.5 cm
Ed. of 500,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Galerie Katze 5 / Berlin
$70.00 - In stock -
In the summer of 1997, Wolfgang Müller discovered the house on the small island of Hjertøya opposite the western Norwegian city of Molde, where Kurt Schwitters spent the summer months from 1932. It's full of peeling collages, inscriptions, and painted, crumbling plaster pillars. Up until a few years ago, the door wasn't locked and anyone could get in.
Lying in the grass in front of the house, Wolfgang Müller suddenly heard a starling making strange noises. Somehow, what the bird said seemed familiar to him: they were passages from the Ursonate that an unknown and distant ancestor had overheard from Schwitters many years ago. Starlings are known to be masters of imitation. Coincidentally, Wolfgang Müller had a recording device with him and had the "Ursonate" pressed onto the enclosed CD. It didn't take long for the rights holders to contact Schwitters' work. The case is still ongoing...
Wolfgang Müller is a German artist, author and musician, born 24 October 1957 in Wolfsburg, based in Berlin and Reykjavík, Iceland. Brother of Max Müller.
Out-of-print first only edition of 500 copies, with audio field recording CD. Profusely illustrated throughout with full colour photography by Müller of the interior details of Hjertøya opposite the western Norwegian city of Molde, where Kurt Schwitters' Hjertøya house.
1957 / 1984, Polish / English / French / German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and slipcase), 319 pages, 25 x 34 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
PAX / Warsaw
$120.00 - In stock -
Stunning 1984 hardcover, slip-cased re-print of 1957's Dni Powstania, a gripping pictorial account of the 1944 Warsaw Insurrection, profusely illustrated with b/w reproductions of photographs taken by Polish soldiers. "This album illustrates the struggle waged during those sixty three days. Unfortunately, the picture is incomplete. Difficult fighting conditions often made it impossible to photograph some of the most important scenes and actions, in spite of the heroic efforts of the photographers. A number of pictures were destroyed when their authors met their death or were taken prisoners. But even those photographs that survived destruction and are now being shown in this collection serve as evidence of what the Warsaw Insurrection stood for, and record the heroism of its soldiers. This album is being published so that their memory may live forever."
The Warsaw Uprising was a major World War II operation by the Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occurred in the summer of 1944, and it was led by the Polish resistance Home Army. The uprising was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German forces from Poland ahead of the Soviet advance. While approaching the eastern suburbs of the city, the Red Army temporarily halted combat operations, enabling the Germans to regroup and defeat the Polish resistance and to destroy the city in retaliation. The Uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support. It was the single largest military effort taken by any European resistance movement during World War II.
Incredible book, seldom seen outside Poland.
Text in Polish. Summary in English, French and German.
Very Good copy book in heavy black debossed and red ink stamped boards, Good—VG dust jacket with edge scuff wear, particularly to the spine edges, Good—VG slipcase with printed paste-on, light edge tanning/wear.
1982, Japanese / English
Softcover, 204 pages, 29 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Comme des Garçons / Tokyo
$3400.00 - Out of stock
The almost mythological, rarest of the extremely rare, Comme des Garçons 1975-1982.
Self-published by Comme des Garçons in 1982, this absolutely stunning softcover volume assembles the most comprehensive collection from the seminal Japanese fashion label's earliest campaigns. It has all the pre Paris collections, from the first campaign in 1975 running through to the first years in Paris (1981/1982), featuring the photography of Deborah Turbeville, early Peter Lindbergh, Sarah Moon, early Bruce Weber, Kazumi Kurigami, Sachiko Kuru, Hajime Sawatari (!), Daiho Yoshida, Arthur Elgort, and other photographers. So many seldom seen early Japanese shoots of the earliest of Rei's collections! Over 200 pages of black and white (and some select colour) photography, printed in Japan on gorgeous, warm, uncoated paper stock.
One of the most sought after fashion photography/reference books ever produced. A magical, ephemeral object, and a must for any devoted fan or fashion collection.
Very Good copy. Beautifully preserved with tanning to pages/old yellow marking from old tape on inside of covers (not outer). No spine creasing. Preserved in plastic sleeve.
1986, Japanese
Hardcover (cloth-bound in slip-case), 152 pages, 36.5 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Chikuma Shobo / Tokyo
Comme des Garçons / Tokyo
$900.00 - In stock -
"Comme des Garçons 1981—1986" is one of the most beautiful and sought after fashion photo-books ever published.
Since the inception of Japanese fashion label Comme des Garçons in 1969, founder Rei Kawakubo applied a particular aesthetic to every aspect of Comme des Garçons, extending her vision to the company's packaging, furniture, interior design, graphic design, and publishing, including a selection of some of the fashion world's most visually compelling and challenging books and printed materials.
This wonderful and very iconic collection of photographs presents Rei Kawakubo's groundbreaking, innovative designs from an exciting period of Comme des Garçons history, between 1981 and 1986, as photographed by some of the most important fashion photographers of our time, including Arthur Elgort, Hans Feurer, Eddy Kohli, Peter Lindbergh, Steven Meisel, Paolo Roversi, Oliviero Toscani, and Bruce Weber, among others.
This gorgeous and incredibly rare clothbound volume, housed in original printed cardboard slip-case, perfectly captures a very important and exciting moment in the history of fashion, and is considered one of the most-collectable and prized fashion photo-books to come out of the 1980s.
Very Good-Fine copy preserved in Very Good cardboard slipcase with only light tanning / light wear.
1971, English
Offset printed poster, 71.5 x 49 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Biba / London
$200.00 - In stock -
Beautiful original genuine vintage Biba poster with photographic image of the model/actress/ballerina Ingrid Boulting, shot veiled and in soft focus by the legendary Sarah Moon in 1971 for the London fashion store, Biba. Gorgeous matte finish, offset printing with fabulous colours and metallic silver stamped in corner with Biba logo. A rare item, this iconic vintage poster was originally used to promote the Biba cosmetics and originally acquired by a staff member from the Biba High Street, Kensington shop in London, around 50 years ago, possibly never available for sale. Copy in the V&A collection, London.
Dimensions : 71.5 x 49 cm
Good condition overall but with one heavy fold to left end, light water marking to same left end, some general light wear to soft paper corners, edges. All wear blends well with the overall feel of the poster, with no marking or wear to the focal areas of the image, still bright and clean without tanning.
Good copy, with some wear.
2022, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 148 pages, 24.6 x 32.5 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$120.00 - In stock -
In Die Bücher, the Berlin-based artist Annette Kelm explores books that fell victim to defamation campaigns, persecution and bans imposed by the National Socialist regime between 1933 and 1945.
With her precise, simple photographic presentation, Kelm creates a new or ongoing public platform for the works of once ostracised writers, illustrators, and publishers, and of the extraordinary artistic and literary diversity of the Weimar Republic and the period before it. At the same time, Kelm transfers this subject matter into the current time.
Her work touches on pressing issues about the value and fragility of democratic models of society, the need to protect freedom of expression and intellectual and artistic diversity, and the potential threats posed to these values by right-wing forces.
Edited by Udo Kittelmann, Mirjam Zadoff, Nicolaus Schafhausen.
1992, English / German / French
Softcover, 176 pages, 30 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Taschen / Cologne
$90.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the first major monograph compiled on American artist Jeff Koons, published by Taschen in 1992, edited by Angelika Muthesius. Lavishly illustrated in glossy full-colour surveying renowned early and iconic Koons works from 1979—1992, including The New (vacuums), Equilibrium (basketballs), Luxury and Degradation, Statuary (Rabbit, etc.), Banality (Michael Jackson and Bubbles, Pink Panther...), Puppy, and much more. There's so much work in this monograph beautifully reproduced in all its kitsch glory, however, what makes it particularly appealing is the fact of including the extensive uncensored series Made In Heaven (1990—91), featuring the artist himself and Ilona Staller, aka Cicciolina, the Hungarian-Italian former porn star, politician, singer and Koons' then-wife, in highly explicit sexual positions rendered in porcelain, glass, and hi-definition (explicit) glamour photography. Loathed by critics, many of the works were destroyed by Koons following his divorce, yet the series helped make Koons the household name he is today. Text in German, English and French by Angelika Muthesius, Jean-Christophe Amman and Anthony Haden-Guest, plus interview with Koons.
Jeffrey Lynn Koons (b. 1955) is an American artist recognized for his work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects. He lives and works in both New York City and his hometown of York, Pennsylvania.
Very Good copy.
1979, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 256 pages, 29.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Grosset & Dunlap / New York
$120.00 - Out of stock
"I don't think Studio 54 is like pagan Rome. I think it's like junior high school." — Andy Warhol
First 1979 edition of Warhol's first book of photographs. Exposures is Warhol's collection of never before published photographs of the people of the Warhol-universe, celebrities captured in candid, revealing moments. With illuminating text by Warhol and Interview magazine editor, writer, and Warhol's "right-hand Factory man" Bob Colacello. Art directed by American photographer, artist, Many Ray apprentice and Warhol collaborator Christopher Makos.
"This is a book of photographs and profiles of his friends by Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol's friends are the stars of rock, fashion, film, society, sports, politics. "My idea of a good picture, " writes Warhol, "is one that's in focus and of a famous person doing something unfamous. It's being in the right place at the wrong time." Only Andy Warhol could be in so many right places at so many wrong times, and only Andy Warhol could bring together these 360 "good pictures," presenting a unique view of contemporary celebrity life by the most contemporary celebrity of all. Here are Mick, Bianca, and Jade Jagger, Truman Capote, Paulette Goddard, Jacqueline Onassis, Liza Minnelli, Salvador Dali, Halston, Diana Vreeland.... Here they are at work and at play, in public and in private, caught at moments when only Andy Warhol as friend and fellow star, could catch them."
Very Good copy, in VG dust jacket, now protected under mylar wrap.
New York: Andy Warhol Books / Grosset & Dunlap, 1979. Folio, original cloth, original dust jacket. Book with abrasion on blank corner of front index leaf (apparently from a harshly erased price), otherwise fine; dust jacket with only a tiny bit of edgewear. A beautiful copy, rare signed and in such good condition.
1978, German
Softcover, 96 pages (with many fold-outs), 23 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Rogner & Bernhard / Münich
$90.00 - Out of stock
First German edition of Christopher Makos' "Schicker Schund" (or "White Trash") from 1978. Born in Massachusetts in 1948, Makos spent his boyhood in California and before moving to Paris to study architecture and, eventually, to apprentice with artist, Man Ray. Since 1966 he has worked at developing a unique style of boldly graphic photo—journalism. In "Schicker Schund", Makos displays his seeming dis-regard for human and social values, describing a strange (and often sordid) terrain, inhabited by the prophets of an ambisexual generation tolling a future of catatonia. Makos himself has said, regarding the nature of his art, that “the camera is a knife. And photography is an act of violence.” Amongst his victims are William Burroughs, Richard Hell, Devine, David Bowie, Debbie Harry, Alice Cooper, David Johansen, Zandra Rhodes, Mick Jagger, Man Ray, Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams and many others.
Very Good copy.
2022, English
Hardcover, 176 pages, 30.5 x 23 cm
Published by
DelMonico Books / US
Brooklyn Museum / Brooklyn
$120.00 - In stock -
The first comprehensive book on the surreal, queer and humorous photographic art of Jimmy DeSana, a central figure in New York's art and music scenes of the 1970s and '80s.
This is the first overview of the work of Jimmy DeSana, a pioneering yet underrecognized figure in New York's downtown art, music and film scenes during the 1970s and 1980s. The book situates DeSana's work and life within the countercultural and queer contexts in the American South as well as New York, through his involvement in mail art, punk and No Wave music and film, and artist collectives and publications.
DeSana's first major project was 101 Nudes, made in Atlanta during the city's gay liberation movement. After moving to New York in 1973, DeSana became immersed in queer networks, collaborating with General Idea and Ray Johnson on zines and mail art, and documenting the genderqueer street performances of Stephen Varble.
By the mid-1970s, DeSana was a fixture in New York's No Wave music and film scenes, serving as portraitist for much of the period's central figures and producing album covers for Talking Heads, James Chance and others. His book Submission, made with William S. Burroughs, humorously staged scenes out of a S&M manual that explored the body as object and the performance of desire. DeSana was also an early adopter of color photography, creating his best-known series, Suburban, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This body of work explores relationships between gender, sexuality and consumer capitalism in often humorous, surreal ways. After DeSana became sick as a result of contracting HIV, he turned to abstraction, using experimental photographic techniques to continue to push against photographic norms.
Edited by Drew Sawyer.
Preface by Anne Pasternak.
Epilogue by Laurie Simmons.
1979, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 22 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Scat / New York
$400.00 - Out of stock
"My dear, it’s all so Christian and medieval and gloomy. Precisely. Jimmy DeSana, your intrepid photographer, has witnessed and preserved for posterity the unspeakable rights of these benighted natives, rites as clearly derived from Christianity as a black mass" — William Burroughs, 1979
Very rare first edition of Submission, Jimmy DeSana's incredible seminal, self-published photo book, created in collaboration with William S. Burroughs and published by Scat, 1979. Jimmy DeSana (1949—1990) was an American artist, and a key figure in the East Village punk art, New Wave, and queer scenes of the 1970s and 1980s. With an introduction by William S. Burroughs, this beautiful artist’s book explores the ambiguous nature of the BDSM subculture, humorously staging scenes out of a S&M manual that explored the body as object and the performance of desire. An iconic document of DeSana's fetishistic photographs, described as "anti-art" for their experimental approach to capturing staged images of the human body contorted, manipulated and in motion, in a manner ranging from "savagely explicit" to the "purely symbolic". DeSana's imagery captured the defining avant-garde spirit of that moment in New York's underground.
Very Good with light wear to covers and edges.
2014, English
Softcover, 172 pages 24 x 32 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
MACK / London
$300.00 - In stock -
Veramente encompasses Italian photographer Guido Guidi’s entire oeuvre, bringing together excerpts of his series from 1959 to the present day to illuminate the distinctive photographic language he has forged over a 40-year career.
Guidi, a pioneer of new Italian landscape photography, was influenced by architectural history, neorealist Italian film, and conceptual art. Using photography as a process and an experience of understanding, Guidi’s body of work frames a visual discourse that revolves around what it means to see, or what it may mean to offer up an image.
Veramente is published to accompany a touring exhibition of the same name opening at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in January 2014, and then moving to Huis Marseille Museum voor Fotografie, Amsterdam in June and the Museo d’Arte della Città, Ravenna in October.
Guido Guidi was born in Cesena, Italy, in 1941. He studied in Venice at the University Institute of Architecture (now IUAV), where he followed the courses of Bruno Zevi, Carlo Scarpa and Mario De Luigi, and at the Advanced Course in Industrial Design with Italo Zannier and Luigi Veronesi.
Now out of print. New copy.
1972, Japanese
Softcover, 214 pages, 20.8 x 14.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Tokyo Sanseisha / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
"Sadistic Play of Bondage"
Very rare 1972 special photobook edition of legendary cult kinbaku magazine SM Select. A beautiful volume, packed cover to cover with full-bleed bondage photography in saturated 1970s colour and b/w, printed on textured stocks, showcasing the talents of famous Japanese actresses and models such as Reiko Ike, Yuri Izumi, Naomi Tani, Junko Miyashita, Nana Minami, and many more. Barely any text, just photos!
First published in 1970, SM Select fast become the leading magazine that sparked the SM magazine boom in the 70's and 80's in Japan. Nobuyuki Miyasaka, Hiroshi Senda, Toshiyuki Suma (Uramado, Kitan Club), etc. and others were all founding members of the magazine, but with the growing popularity of SM culture and magazines during this period, many contributors went on to establish other SM publishing ventures — Shin Miyasaka and Toshiyuki Suma established Sun Publishing and launched SM Collector, while Seiko Ishikawa and three others from Tokyo Sanseisha moved to Shishobo and launched SM Fan. SM Select run for 20 years, ending in 1990.
Building from the foundations of its predecessors Kitan Club and Uramado, SM Select contained a harder, non-conformist and fanatic edge, featuring writings with more lavish visual SM content — photographs and artworks in colour and black and white. The high quality of photography and artwork ushered in a new era of SM publishing, with SM Select featuring many now legendary artists, including Haruo Shinozaki, Jun Yoshida, Toshio Saeki, Kazuyuki Minori, Minoru Nagao, Ruyo Yo, Yasuharu Maeda, Mino Mura Akira, Hiro Kato, Nishimura Haruhi, Kozumi Yuko, Kito Akatsuki, Oshima Yukio, Kirigaoka Hiroyuki, Lin Moonlight, Maeda Yasunari, Yuya Nohira, Nakao Kaoru, etc. Major contributors were Dan Oniroku and Aotaro Aki. The principal rope master was Toshiyuki Suma. Rope master and writer Chimuo Nureki had several guest appearances in the magazine and took over as principal master when Mr. Suma fell ill. Photographer Norio Sugiura was the main photographer in the magazine from the 1980s.
Average—Good copy with some cover creases and spine crease, light wear, old fragile binding.
2015, Japanese / English
Softcover (silkscreened cover), 40 pages, 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Akio Nagasawa Gallery / Tokyo
$240.00 - Out of stock
Signed limited edition of A Room by Daido Moriyama, published in 2015 by Akio Nagasawa Publishing. A very special photo book in variation. Created at a printing event at Akio Nagasawa Gallery in 2015, in homage to Moriyama's 1974 Printing Show performance, a selection of images were selected from a series of erotically charged photographs of female nudes and domestic items and assembled in various orders to create numerous page sequences for the print-runs. Features 2 different silkscreened covers that were available in a limited edition of 250 signed/numbered copies each. A lovely publication.
Daido Moriyama (Ikeda, Osaka, 1938) lives and works in Tokyo.He first trained in graphic design before taking up photography under Takeji Iwamiya and Eikoh Hosoe as an assistant.He became an independent photographer in 1964, publishing Nippon Gekijō Shashinchō (Japan Theater Photo Album) in 1968 and Shashin yo Sayounara (Farewell Photography) in 1972; the work showed the darker sides of urban life and the city.He has had a radical impact on the photographic and art world in both Japan and in the West, with his expressive style of 'are, bure, boke' (rough, blurred and out-of-focus) and of quick snapshots without looking in the viewfinder. Solo shows at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris solidified Moriyama's worldwide reputation, and in 2012, he became the first Japanese to be awarded in the category of Lifetime Achievement at the 28th Annual Infinity Awards hosted by the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York.
Signed by Daido Moriyama.
2018, Japanese / English / Chinese
Softcover, 3 volumes plus supplement, printed plastic bag
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
NITESHA / Tokyo
$280.00 - In stock -
First, quickly out-of-print, complete limited-edition facsimile of all three issues the ground-breaking Japanese photography magazine Provoke. The short-lived Provoke, founded in 1968 by art critic Koji Taki (1928-2011), photographer Takuma Nakahira (1938-2015), poet Takahiko Okada (1939-1997), photographer Yutaka Takanashi, and later joined by Daido Moriyama, is nowadays recognized as a major contribution to postwar photography in Japan, featuring the country's finest representatives of protest photography, vanguard fine art and critical theory in only three issues ever published.
In 2018, marking the 50th year since Provoke had first appeared, this special edition was published by NITESHA, a secondhand bookshop in Tokyo who were fortunate to be able to purchase all three volumes of the original prints. Rather than merely putting them back on the market again for profit, they decided to make a reprint of these extremely rare and inaccessible issues that are currently only owned by a limited number of connoisseurs. Striving to stay as close to the original publications as possible, all three issues are accompanied by a supplementary volume containing all the original Japanese texts (essays, poetry, etc.) translated into both English and Chinese, including those by Takahiko Okada (excluded from Steidl's “The Japanese Box” reissue due to copyright issues). This facsimile reprint also maintains the original size of all of the images (unlike the cropped Steidl “The Japanese Box” reissue), making it the closest thing to the seldom seen originals.
Comes housed in the publisher's limited edition "Provoke" printed plastic bag, as first issued, making it a most complete copy of this book-set.
Provoke's goal was to mirror the complexities of Japanese society and its art world of the 1960s, a decade shaped by the country's first large-scale student protests. The subtitle for the magazine was “Provocative Materials for Thought,” and each self-published issue was composed of photographs, essays and poems. The movement yielded a wave of new books featuring innovative graphic design combined with photography: serialized imagery, gripping text-image combinations, dynamic cropping and the use of provocatively "poor" materials. The writings and images by Provoke's members - Taki, Nakahira, Okada, Takanashi and Moriyama - were suffused with the tactics developed by Japanese protest photographers such as Nobuyoshi Araki, Eikoh Hosoe and Shomei Tomatsu, who pointed at and criticized the mythologies of modern life. Provoke’s grainy, blurry, and out-of-focus photographs were initially ridiculed as are-bure-boke (a Japanese term meaning, literally, “rough, blurred and out-of-focus”) and stirred a great deal of controversy, yet it had created a strong impact inside and outside of the photography world during that time and its influence cannot be overstated.
PROVOKE 1: Softcover, 68 pages, 21 x 21 cm
PROVOKE 2: Softcover (w. printed wrap-around obi strip), 110 pages, 24.2 x 18 cm
PROVOKE 3: Softcover, 110 pages, 24 x 18.4 cm.
PROVOKE Textbook (English and Chinese translations), 24 x 18.4 cm
As New. This edition is now out-of-print, further re-prints have been made.