World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
CLOSED FOR SUMMER.
RE-OPENING 01.02.24
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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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.
1985, Japanese
Softcover, 260 pages, 19 x 13 cm
Published by
Data House / Tokyo
$200.00 - In stock -
Possibly the most fun you can cram into 260-odd pages! A now very collectible volume edited by none other than Japanese master of erotic superrealism, Hajime Sorayama, Pink Department Store is a wild book digest of visual sex — straight out of 1985! A compendium of remarkable erotic imagery packed into this one-stop look-book of kink compiled by Sorayama, all reproduced in full-colour on beautiful warm raw paper stock, designed by Hisao Iguchi. From the Tokyo sex clubs, phone-booths and toilet stalls, Shibari photography to pink film posters, x-rated manga to wildlife fornication, leather daddys to dominatrixes, Pink Department Store is a safari through graphic perversion and joyous visual innuendo. Alongside archival material and international works the book generously features an abundance of works by over 100 contemporary Japanese illustrators and photographers, including Aimei Ozaki, Harumi Yamaguchi, Takashi Nemoto, Yosuke Onishi, Suehiro Maruo, Hajime Sorayama, Mizumaru Anzai, Yokoyama Akira, Keiichi Ota, Akira Ishigaki, Kaoru Ueda, Teruhiko Yumura, Yoshiharu Ebisu, Arata Taga, to name but a few. There is also a directory list to contact them all!
Very Good—NF copy in VG original dust jacket and rarely preserved publisher's obi-strip.
1988, English / Japanese
Softcover, oversized, loose-leaf pages, 42 x 29.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Comme des Garçons / Tokyo
$440.00 - Out of stock
First 1988 edition, first printing of the inaugural issue of the cult, privately distributed Comme des Garçons publication. The incredible first issue of Comme des Garçons' 'Six' magazine (1988) features the work of Hungarian photographer André Kertész, Comme des Garçons by photographer Peter Lindbergh, photography by Sachiko Kuru, features on artist Jean Cocteau, architect Eileen Gray, artist Michel Sauer, and an interview with fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto, plus additional photography by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Arthur Elgort, Tony Mendoza, Sachiko Kuru, Shinji Mori, Serge Lido and Gisele Freund. Beautiful first-edition printing of this over-sized magazine vision of Rei Kawakubo, including die-cut features throughout and de-bossed cover title.
Between 1988 and 1991, Comme des Garçons explored the theme of the sixth sense via eight special biannual oversized, unstapled magazines titled 'Six'. These magazines were launched to coincide with Comme des Garçons fashion collections and were privately printed and distributed by Comme. The magazine visually represented the brand in a way that no other fashion company had before. Rei Kawakubo invited Tsuguya Inoue to art direct and Atsuko Kozasu to edit the issues, whilst contributions came from a diverse array of leading designers and artists. Issues of Comme des Garçons 'Six' have become very sought after collectors items.
Very Good / Near Fine copy.
1978, Japanese
Softcover, 204 pages, 21 x 29.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Hanashi-no-Tokushu / Tokyo
$650.00 - In stock -
Exceptionally rare (signed!) 1978 first edition photobook by Michiko Matsumoto, one of post war Japan's leading photographers. As a young female photographer growing up in a period of turmoil, Matsumoto conveys the wonders of women to the viewer from the perspective of a woman. Women Come Alive is her rarest and greatest example of this. This wonderful book collects "seven years with women...", Matsumoto's front-line photographic records of the women's liberation movement in Japan in the 1970s and her "Sisters Across Borders" (New York, Paris, Los Angeles, London...), as well as portraits of female artists, activists and friends Yoko Ono, Maki Asakawa, Eiko Ishioka, Michiko Gorman, Mamako Yoneyama, Teruko Yoshitake, Tokiko Kato, Harumi Yamaguchi, Chinatsu Nakayama and others. A true time-capsule, this book visits the workshops, bookshops, marches, women's centres, lesbian bars, exhibitions, editorial offices, dances and studios of a pivotal time of great change. An incredible book of feminist protest and celebration. Virtually an impossible book to find, even without a signature from the artist! Highly recommended!!
Very Good copy in very good dust jacket. Signed in black ink and dated 1978.6.7 on title page.
2014, Japanese
Softcover (in card slipcase w. obi), 260 pages, 25.4 x 18.2 cm
Signed.,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Town to House / Japan
$280.00 - In stock -
Signed first edition of "Shinjuku 1968" by acclaimed Japanese photographer and representative of the Provoke movement, Hitomi Watanabe, published in 2014 and now out of print.
"The core of the collection is formed by photographs from the year 1969, the year in which the Shinjuku West Exit square became a passage and a meeting penned by the media as “Folk Guerilla” was obliterated by the riot police, a greater part of the collected photos were taken in 1968. At that time, the first place editors would take me to was a bar called Unicon, near Shinjuku Gyoen. After that, we would go barhopping to places like DUG (which is still going strong even today),Trevi, DIG, Mokuba, Pit In, Bizarre, places where modern jazz was playing. The time of the Red Tents of Juro Kara near Hanazono shrine, of the avant-garde films of ATG, the performance art happenings on the streets, before they became pedestrian zones… It was a time when hippies stoned off their mind would cross your path, and “underground” was the word you’d hear in the streets of Shinjuku. When it was not Shibuya or Shimokitazawa, not Kichijoji but Shinjuku where culture was taking place. Days like these continued, until one night, a huge riot took place in the Shinjuku area. The 10.21 International Anti-War Day. While being jostled with the crowd, the once abstract Vietnam War and its consequences became a tangible reality which I experienced with my own body.
In the Shinjuku of 1968, you can see an entire era reflected." — Excerpt from the afterword
"These may be photographs of the past, but they show the present." — Nobuyoshi Araki
Shinjuku 1968 consists entirely of Watanabe's photographs of the Tokyo neighbourhood Shinjuku at the end of the 1960s, which can be said to be the beginning of her photographic career. It was here that she first encountered the Japanese counter culture and became involved in the student movement and anti-war protests. Her candid photographs of the everyday lives of the protesters, the state violence, and the aftermath of rioting from her insider’s vantage on this tumultuous moment afforded her work an undeniable, enduring power. Here, in "Shinjuku 1968", Watanabe presents her documents of the protests and rallies beside her images of the underground scene, the theatre, clubs, the Shinjuku streets, shopfronts, and the everyday folk that inhabited the neighbourhood at that time, with some of the images republished for the first time since her iconic "Shinjuku Contemporary 1968" and "Kaihoku '68 / Liberated Area '68" photo books of the 1960s.
Very Good copy, almost As New, with original slipcase and publisher's obi-strip (featuring Nobuyoshi Araki testimonial). Signed and dated by Hitomi Watanabe in 2015 to the colophon page in black pen.
1977, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 28 pages, 36.5 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Nisshindo Optical Shop / Nagoya
$140.00 - In stock -
Extremely rare calendar issue from acclaimed Japanese photographer and representative of the Provoke movement, Hitomi Watanabe. Issued privately by a small eyeglasses shop in Nagoya, Nisshindo Optical Shop, this 1977 "LOOK" Calendar presents the rarely seen personal 1970s work of Watanabe. Watanabe began her career photographing in the Tokyo neighbourhood of Shinjuku, home to Japan’s 1960s counter culture. She came to prominence during the Zenkyoto student movement in the late 1960s, occupied the University of Tokyo campus in 1968-69 and participated in the 10.21 International Anti-War Day protests and 1970 Anpo protests against the renewal of the Japan-US Mutual Security Treaty. Her candid photographs of the everyday lives of the protesters, the state violence, and the aftermath of rioting from her insider’s vantage on this tumultuous moment afforded her work an undeniable, enduring power. Her famed "Kaihoku '68 / Liberated Area '68" a testament to this. When the Japan-US Mutual security treaty was renewed in 1970, Watanabe, heartbroken that they had not been able to prevent it, began her long travels through Asia, particularly India and Nepal, from which these beautiful, atmospheric colour photographs are taken. Reproduced in large format across the 12 months of 1977.
Very Good copy with some light wear and light cover tanning. Has been previously hung.
1971, Japanese
Hardcover (w. slip-case) 192 pages, 24 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Shinsensha / Tokyo
$450.00 - In stock -
Gorgeous first (boxed) hardcover edition of Tadao Mitome's "protest-book masterpiece" published in 1971, documenting the Sanrizuka resistance to the building of Tokyo's Narita Airport. Photographs follow the thousands of protestors into battle against riot police and record their construction of fortresses and underground tunnels.
“A superb document about the medieval fighting that took place over a period of some five years around Narita airport. Fuelled by the spirit of protest in the late 60s this constituted the first of many often violent anti-airport protests in the region.”
“Sanrizuka documents the intense civil unrest between residents of Sanrizuka, an agricultural area located on the east side of Narita airport, and government authorities, in the run up to the construction and later expansion of the airport. Under a 1966 plan, the airport would have been completed in 1971, but due to the ongoing resettlement disputes, not all of the land for the airport was available by then. Finally, in 1971, the Japanese government began forcibly expropriating land. 291 protesters were arrested and more than 1,000 police, villagers and student militants were injured in a series of riots.“
Editing and art direction by the legendary activist designer Kiyoshi Awazu (1929–2009) with stunning deep gravure printing. Included in “The Japanese Photobook, 1912–1990” by Kaneko Ryuichi and Manfred Heiting and "The Photobook: A History, Volume III" by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, p. 57.
Very Good copy with some age/wear/light scratching to box.
1989, Japanese
Softcover, 208 pages, 13 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fiction Inc. / Tokyo
$80.00 - In stock -
Issue No.36 of the great SALE2 periodical from Tokyo Japan, founded in 1984 by Makoto Orui, who later became art director for Purple magazine in France and Rockin’on magazine in Japan. SALE2 was active for about 14 years during the 1980s—1990s, published regularly as a sort-of fanzine/journal/catalogue/pocket-book by Fiction, Inc., a specialty shop and publisher of fetish and erotica in Tokyo in the 1980-90s. With Orui's distinct design SALE2 developed an exclusive curated editorial set on ‘erotisism and its spiritual philosophy’, with each issue exploring different themes and features, heavy on fetishism and erotic art.
Issue No.36, the "Female Foot Fetishism Special Issue" with the wonderful wraparound Pierre Molinier cover is packed with imagery and essays around the theme of "Foot and Fetish Heel" throughout history, literature, film and fetish publishing, etc. profusely illustrated with drawings, photography, bondage illustrations, film stills, catalogue clippings, and artworks, including works by Bill Ward, Pierre Molinier, Nobuyoshi Araki, and so many more. It also features the Fiction, Inc. section that samples a cross-section of content from catalogue publications including the work of John Willie, Bill Ward, Carlo, Eric Stanton, Irving Claw, Betty Page, and periodicals such as Rubber Magazine, Amateur Bondage, Bizarre Comix, Bizarre Classix, Bizarre Fotos, Stiletto, and much more... Very heavily illustrated throughout with erotic photography and artwork, all texts in Japanese.
Very Good copy.
1980, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. acetate jacket and obi-strip), 190 pages, 30 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Byakuya Shobo / Tokyo
$1000.00 - In stock -
First edition. A seminal Japanese photo book and instant classic upon release, Flash up is one of the most remarkable photographic excursions into the seedy underbelly of 1970s Tokyo. Kurata (b. 1945—2020), one Japan’s formidable contemporary photographers who’s work is often referenced in the same circles as his "Provoke" teachers Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, won the fifth Kimura Ihei Award in 1980 for this, his first book, his acclaimed collection of photographs of creatures of the night — gangsters showing off their full-length tattoos, youth styling themselves after the Hells Angels, self-professed ultra-nationalists from the notorious Black Dragon Society, transvestites drawing in crowds of men, cabaret girls...
"The photographs of Seiji Kurata are striking for their violence. The viewer must be prepared to be hit by his flashgun along with the subjects. ‘Violence’, in this case, is not necessarily invoked by the scenes of blood-shed; rather, it is Kurata’s sharp-shooting ability to stop the flow of time, capture the moment, draw of details we would otherwise never see, then proffer them up before our eyes. Sometimes our response is to avert our eyes for fear of seeing too much. This is not to say that the images are not exaggerated; for after all, people tend only to see what they want to see. If there are those who find Kurata’s photographs ‘ugly’, it can only be said that he has succeeded in paradoxically pointing the finger at them: You who want to avoid ugliness, he says, this is reality and I have cut it out for you. [...] we must admit that the ugliness apparent in these photographs is our ugliness. Our failure to do so simply invites Kurata to deal us an extra-violent blow with his images."—Akira Hasegawa, from the afterword.
Included in Martin Parr & Gerry Badger, The Photobook, Vol. II.
Text in English and Japanese.
Very Good copy, wear and usual shrinkage to publisher's thick acetate dust jacket, VG original metallic obi-strip, Very Good book, light bump to one corner.
1980, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 21.5 x 15.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Daisan Shokan / Tokyo
$590.00 - In stock -
Incredibly rare and collectible 1980 first edition of the visually explosive cult photo book on the Japanese motorcycle gang phenomenon of the 1970s, "The Bosozoqu", designed by editor Hideki Kimura, with photography by Seiji Kurata ("Flash Up"), Muji Moriya, Ryosuke Kagiwada, Yuichi Nagata, and others. Published by Daisan Shokan, this has to be the most incredible book of this wild period of 1970's teenage biker gang subculture and runaway tribes. It's all packed in here — the gangs, the gatherings, the adrenaline, the drama, the style — right down to the gang insignia, flags, tattoos, jackets, graffiti, weapons, haircuts, fashions, altercations — compiled here in this maniac design of Kimura's that matches the violent nature of the culture. Cover-to-cover full-bleed, high contrast collage photo scrapbook style, with loads of airbrushed graphics and insane type-design. An art book as much as it is a photo book, and a book like no other. Much like Araki's Tokyo Lucky Hole, The Bosozoqu documents an incredible fleeting moment in Japanese street culture that has long disappeared to history. A must have classic of the Bōsōzoku photo book genre!
Very Good copy in Good original dust jacket. Some light wear, foxing and ripple to back few pages/back cover (hidden beneath dust jacket which is now preserved in mylar wrap). Otherwise a sharp, tight, internally clean copy. Includes all original publisher's inserts in place.
1979, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 124 pages, 25.5 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Daisan Shokan / Tokyo
$290.00 - In stock -
Incredibly rare and collectible 1979 first edition of the amazing "One Night Carnival", one of the finest cult photo books of Japanese motorcycle gangs of the 1970s (Bōsōzoku). Published by Daisan Shokan, this stylishly designed book is packed cover—to—cover with 100s of immersive photographs by Fumiaki Fukada, Yuji Moriya, Kazutoshi Sumitomo, and Mutsuhito Fujio of this explosive period of teenage biker gang subculture and runaway tribes — the gatherings, the adrenaline, the drama, the style — right down to the gang insignia, flags, tattoos, jackets, weapons, haircuts... Especially great about the book is the heavy focus in the many biker girl gangs. All captured in high contrast, One Night Carnival, much like Araki's Tokyo Lucky Hole, documents an incredible fleeting moment in Japanese street culture that has long disappeared to history. A classic of the Bōsōzoku photo book genre that will appeal to any fan of Seiji Kurata.
Very Good copy in VG original dust jacket, light wear. Some old foxing to cover boards (hidden beneath dust jacket which is now preserved in mylar wrap). Light handling.
1983, Japanese / English
Softcover (w. original plastic cover and obi band), 138 pages, 22 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Asahi Shimbun / Japan
$180.00 - In stock -
Rare first edition of this compelling early 1980's photo book of violence and disaffection in American cities from Japanese photographer Shigemoto Nobi, printed by Asahi Shimbun in 1983.
Images of social unrest, gang warfare, prostitution, police precinct lockups, murder... the "poverty of the heart" real people must face behind the facade of America's boasted wealth of economic growth, something Japanese photographer Shigemoto Nobi (b. 1943) first encountered when he went to New York in his twenties to work as a freelance commercial photographer. Despite the implications of the title, Shigemoto Nobi visited and documented not only New York, but also Detroit, Chicago, Hawaii, the US/Mexican border and the Fort Apache Indian reservation, taking images primarily at night. Intense, lurid reportage on life in the United States of America in rich, saturated colour Kodochrome. File alongside Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, Seiji Kurata, or Bruce Davidson's "Subway".
First printing in original protective plastic sleeve with original obi band. Texts in Japanese and English.
Very Good copy with usual light damage/shrinkage to aged original plastic dust jacket cover/obi. Light edge wear.
1981, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), unpaginated, 25.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Shinko Music Publishing / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
Rare original Japanese edition of the cult cat classic photo book and 1980's phenomenon, Namennayo Cats, published in 1981 by Shinko Music Publishing. The illustrated photo album of the delinquent Namennayo Cats in their youth, dressed up in leathers, smoking cigarettes, hanging at the catnip coffee shop and the pinball arcade, graffitiing the school, playing in a rock band, as members in bōsōzoku biker gangs, all photographed by Satoro Tsuda and styled by a host of collaborators, set in elaborate miniature scenes with kitten scale props and ever-changing costumes. Tsuda fell in love with cats when he took four abandoned kittens into his care in 1979. "One day, almost two months since they met, Tsuda noticed the kittens playing with costumes for dolls left behind by his girlfriend." The rest is history. Practically overnight the "obliged" Namennayo Cats became mega idols in Japan, and this book an international treasure of Cat Photo humour.
Very Good copy of the original Japanese edition in dust jacket with light wear, preserved under mylar wrap..
1981, English
Softcover, unpaginated, 25.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Shinko Music Publishing / Tokyo
Jonathan Music / Sydney
$160.00 - In stock -
Super rare English edition of the cult cat classic photo book and 1980's phenomenon, Namennayo Cats, published in 1981 by Shinko Music Publishing, Tokyo, and this very rare English translation by Jonathan Music, North Sydney. The illustrated photo album of the delinquent Namennayo Cats in their youth, dressed up in leathers, smoking cigarettes, hanging at the catnip coffee shop and the pinball arcade, graffitiing the school, playing in a rock band, as members in bōsōzoku biker gangs, all photographed by Satoro Tsuda and styled by a host of collaborators, set in elaborate miniature scenes with kitten scale props and ever-changing costumes. Tsuda fell in love with cats when he took four abandoned kittens into his care in 1979. "One day, almost two months since they met, Tsuda noticed the kittens playing with costumes for dolls left behind by his girlfriend." The rest is history. Practically overnight the "obliged" Namennayo Cats became mega idols in Japan, and this book an international treasure of Cat Photo humour.
Very Good copy of the especially collectible English edition, with only light cover wear/tanning.
2023, Japanese
Softcover, 168 pages, 20.5 x 20.5 cm
Published by
Ribonsha / Japan
$70.00 - In stock -
Photo book of works by Japanese avant-garde artist and writer, Genpei Akasegawa (1937—2014), refreshing his legacy as an artist who pioneered ways of thinking about art under capitalism that still feel like trenchant critiques decades later.
Genpei Akasegawa was not only an artist who successfully transitioned from the avant-garde to the broader realm of popular culture but also an award-winning writer and photographer. He emerged in the Japanese art scene in the 1960s. Best known internationally as a member of the influential, anti-art collective Hi-Red Center (1963–64), Genpei Akasegawa is one of the all-time trickster figures of Japanese art history. The famous Model 1,000-Yen Note Incident (1963), which involved a real-life police investigation and trial, solidified his reputation as an inspired conceptualist. In 1986, Akasegawa, and his collaborators, including the Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori, formed a new group called the Rojō Kansatsu Gakkai (Street Observation Society). Within this group, Akasegawa showcased a series of photographs featuring Tokyo's bizarre and overlooked architectural features. These structures, referred to by Akasegawa as 'Thommasons', were often disregarded by society but were repurposed by Akasegawa as objects of artistic value.
Keiko Toyoda, of Shiseido Gallery, invited six midcareer artists to select photographs from 40,000 unexhibited 35mm reversal film prints, shot between 1985 and 2006, which Akasegawa kept carefully filed in his study. Shuta Hasunuma, Zon Ito, Sachiko Kazama, Yuko Mohri, Yuta Nakamura and Yasuhiro Suzuki each chose around 20 prints each, presented in this first survey book of Akasegawa's photography, from his ‘Hyperart Thomasson’ project of the 1970s onward: photographs of functionless objects embedded and preserved in everyday spaces despite their lack of utility, to capturing everything from odd lines scored into a patch of green asphalt to table settings and cat portraits (in pre-meme-era 1993).
In addition to his artistic work, Akasegawa was also a prolific writer and critic, having authored over 20 publications on art and culture.
1973, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 139 pages, 24.7 x 18.7 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fujingahosha / Tokyo
$200.00 - In stock -
1973 Japanese hardcover edition of "Take Ivy", the legendary 1965 cult photo-book that set off an explosion of American-influenced “Ivy Style” fashion among students in the Ginza shopping district of Tokyo.
Sold out immediately on publication, and little known until recently outside of Japan, Take Ivy (the title inspired by "Take Five" by Dave Brubeck) was authored by four Japanese sartorial men's style enthusiasts and photographer Teruyoshi Hayashida (who shot for the influential Men’s Club magazine in Japan) and is a beautiful collection of candid, almost voyeuristic, photographs shot on the campuses of America’s elite Ivy League universities. The series focuses on college-aged men and their clothes between 1959-1965. Whether getting a meal on campus, lounging in the quad, riding bikes, studying in the library, in class, or at the boathouse, the subjects of this photographic compendium are impeccably and distinctively dressed in fine American-made garments. The New York Times describes "Take Ivy" as “a treasure of fashion insiders”, a bible for Japanese baby boomers, stylists and photographers ever since its first publication, the book remains the definitive document of the Ivy Style and one of the most iconic fashion books of all time. Original copies are rare in the West, garnering auction prices as high as $2000.
Very Good copy in Good dust jacket (preserved in mylar wrap). Small closed tears to top of dust-jacket spine, otherwise VG; some foxing spots to first and last pages, otherwise a wonderful sharp copy of the very scarce, very limited 1973 printing. The quality and feel of these early editions, printed in Japan, far surpass the many later, more common English and Japanese editions.
1998, Japanese
Softcover, 126 pages, 28.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Eichi Shuppan / Tokyo
$65.00 - In stock -
School Wear Collection File No. 1, published in Japan in 1998, a glossy colour photo-book/magazine (mook) and comprehensive record of female Japanese school wear (seifuku) and sailor fuku Summer and Winter uniform collections from 1996—1997, all modelled by Japanese school girls. A source of pride and tradition, the Japanese school uniform has become an international icon, referenced in popular culture and by designers and stylists all over the world. Profusely illustrated with all of the uniforms from the mid-1990s shot thoroughly, and rather provocatively, by Katsumi Yamaguchi, styled by Masahiko Terada, these books aren't without their kink undercurrent (Eichi publishes Beppin School, after all). Loads of data and information on the collecting of uniforms, school fashion trends (baggy socks in 1996!), challenges, histories, model profiles, and advertisements laced throughout the photoshoots. An amazing, comprehensive reference.
Very Good—Near Fine copy.
1993, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 144 pages, 23 x 31 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Libro Port Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$300.00 - In stock -
The wonderful 1993 first over-sized edition of Araki's incredible Erotos photo book, one of his finest. In this work, controversial and legendary Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki makes a radical departure from his usual portraits and cityscapes. A collection of arrestingly primal close-ups of parts of the body as well as various objects—pipes, fruit, wet sidewalks, flowers, snails—Erotos delves deep into the erotic subconscious. Reproduced in gorgeous glossy duotone full-page bleed, bound in heavy gloss red, foiled hardcovers. A stunning book! Highly recommended.
Nobuyoshi Araki is a prolific Japanese photographer who has produced thousands of photographs over the course of his career. He became famous for “Un Voyage Sentimental” (1971), a series of photos depicting both banal and deeply intimate scenes of his wife and lifelong muse, essayist Aoki Yoko (whom the artist credits for making him a photographer), during their honeymoon. To date the 75 year old has produced 450 photo books and counting. With a repertoire that knows no boundaries, Araki's diaristic style of photography has captured the world around him (his cat Chiro, the people and landscapes of Japan and his travels, flowers, family), though it is Araki’s intensely sexual imagery that has elicited particular controversy and fascination throughout his career. Similarly to Helmut Newton, Araki has often addressed subversive themes — such as bondage in the Japanese style Kinbaku — in his provocative depictions of female nudes. He typically works in black-and-white photography, and his hallmark style is deliberately casual. “Rather than shooting something that looks like a professional photograph, I want my work to feel intimate, like someone in the subject’s inner circle shot them,” he says. Pushing against the world of commercialised photography, he is celebrated for his history of self-publishing and distributing his work, beginning with his Xerox Photo Albums of 1970. Amongst many others, Araki has collaborated with American photographer Nan Goldin and Icelandic musician Björk.
Very Good copy in Very Good dust jacket with small amount of wear and tear.
1967, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 310 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Haga Bookstore / Japan
$250.00 - In stock -
Rare and iconic book, Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (1967) is a collaboration between legendary Japanese underground theater and film director Shuji Terayama, graphic designer Tadanori Yokoo and photographer/cinematographer Yasuhiro Yoshioka. As a precursor to Terayama's first audacious feature-length film of the same title, from 1971, this beautiful softcover book is filled with collages, photographs, graphics, drawings and texts (in Japanese), housed in an elaborate dust-jacket (with amazing Beatles homage lipstick collage on verso) typical of the bold and vibrant pop design style of Yokoo, establishes Terayama as a multi-talented avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, editor and photographer, and one of the central figures of the runaway movement in 1960s Japan. In the same year as this book was published, Terayama (in collaboration with Tadanori Yokoo and others) formed the Tenjo Sajiki, a major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene, the prolific group was known for their stage works marked by experimentalism, folklore influences, social provocation, grotesque eroticism and the flamboyant fantasy characteristic of Terayama's oeuvre. An amazing and rare early example of their published collaborative work, wrapped in one of Yokoo's most iconic graphic works.
Shūji Terayama (1935 — 1983) was a Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer. His works range from radio drama, experimental television, underground (Angura) theatre, countercultural essays, to Japanese New Wave and "expanded" cinema. Terayama is considered one of the most productive and provocative creative artists to come out of Japan, with a wide-reaching influence on many artists from the 1970s onward.
Good copy with Good dust jacket. General tanning and foxing, with edge wear and surface wear to jacket.
1978 / 1979, Japanese
Softcover, 127 pages + 144 pages, 22.5 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Visual Message / Tokyo
$150.00 - Out of stock
First (1978) and second (1979) issues of Visual Message, the "comprehensive magazine of the visual age", published in Japan for a short period at the end of the 1970s. This explosive inaugural issue, co-edited by graphic designers Ikko Tanaka and Kazuya Uegami, and copywriter Shinya Nishimura and themed "Visual Scandal" is cover-to-cover packed with leading graphic artists, photographers, architects, textile designers, etc. from Japan and overseas including Tadanori Yokoo, Masao Saito, Harumi Yamaguchi, Masamichi Oikawa, Eiko Ishioka, Shigeo Fukuda, Tomi Ungerer, Masayuki Kurokawa, SITE, Tsunehisa Kimura, Tenmei Kano, Raymond Savignac, Katsumi Asaba, Ken Mori, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Folon, Asai Shinpei, Marcel Duchamp, Rene Magritte, Herb Lubalin, Osamu Nagahama, M.C. Escher, Shiro Tatsumi, Hiroki Hayashi, Masayoshi Nakajo, Hiroshi Yoda, Hipgnosis, and many more.
Second 1979 issue of Visual Message is structured around the themes "Before/After" and "Scale" and again is cover-to-cover packed with leading graphic artists, photographers, architects, textile designers, etc. from Japan and overseas including Tadanori Yokoo, Philip Johnson, Hideo Yamashita, Seiji Takada, Takahisa Kamijō, Haruo Takino, Takenobu Igarashi, Akira Yokoyama, Hisaki Hiramatsu, Takamichi Ito, Tomoya Nakano, Shōji Yamagishi, and many more.
V.M. 1. Good copy. Some cover/spine wear/creases/small closed tear to cover edge.
V.M. 2. Very Good copy. Light general wear, bumping.
1994, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 240 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Bunyusha / Tokyo
$65.00 - In stock -
Rare first 1994 edition of this gorgeous book-document of the life and work of acclaimed Japanese sci-fi author and countercultural icon, Izumi Suzuki, published by Bunyusha, Tokyo, and illustrated with Nobuyoshi Araki's photographs. "Towards the love of speed, told by people who were around. A record of an amazing life. Actress, writer, wife of Kaoru Abe"
Long out-of-print, this book portrait documents the singular, but tragically short, biography and bibliography of this Japanese sci-fi iconoclast who debuted as a writer at the age of 20, having written stories since her childhood. Edited by Tamami Nishimura and Kenichi Yamada, commemorative chapters on Suzuki by her friends, collaborators and colleagues trace her life on the stage (as a member of Shuji Terayama's underground theater troupe Tenjo Saijiki), the screen (as "pink" film actress), the image (as model and muse to photographer Nobuyoshi Araki), the page (as celebrated pop culture essayist and proto-cyberpunk author), through the life between with marriage to free jazz alto-saxophonist Kaoru Abe and suicide at age 36 — a life as adventurous and tumultuous as the art they made and the counterculture they inhabited. Illustrated throughout with Nobuyoshi Araki's intimate colour and b/w photographs of Suzuki. Includes comprehensive bibliography of Suzuki's writings, many magazine articles and works of fiction.
Izumi Suzuki was born in 1949. After dropping out of high school she worked in a factory before finding success and infamy as a model and actress. She was a member of Shuji Terayama's independent underground theater troupe Tenjo Saijiki, and acted in both "pink" films and classics of 1970s Japanese cinema. Izumi was the subject of many of Nobuyoshi Araki's most famous photographs and this photobook is one of his most sought after. When the father of her children, the jazz musician Kaoru Abe, died of an overdose, Suzuki’s creative output went into hyperdrive and she began producing the irreverent and punky short fiction, novels and essays that ensured her reputation would outstrip and outlast that of the men she had been associated with in her early career. She took her own life in 1986, leaving behind a decade’s worth of groundbreaking and influential writing.
Good copy in dust jacket and obi. Most complete copy, with some buckling.
2002, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket + obi), 132 pages, 37.2 x 26.1 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Bunyusha / Tokyo
$200.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful, over-sized hardcover first edition of IZUMI,this bad girl., the stunning collection of Araki's photographic collaborations with Japanese sci-fi author, actress and countercultural icon, Izumi Suzuki. A gorgeous example of Araki's early work and one of his most sought after books, now long out-of-print. Because of Izumi's relationship with Araki, the photos are particularly intimate, capturing the singular, but tragically short life of Suzuki. The iconoclastic Izumi debuted as a writer at the age of 20. From the stage (as a member of Shuji Terayama's underground theatre troupe Tenjo Saijiki), the screen (as "pink" film actress), the image (as model and muse to photographer Nobuyoshi Araki), the page (as celebrated pop culture essayist and proto-cyberpunk author), through to the life between with marriage to free jazz alto-saxophonist Kaoru Abe and suicide at age 36 — Izumi's was a life as adventurous and tumultuous as the art she made and the counterculture she inhabited. She took her own life in 1986, leaving behind a decade’s worth of groundbreaking and influential writing.
"Izumi has been, still is THE woman in A's heart"—Nobuyoshi Araki
Fine copy in Fine dust jacket and obi. Most complete copy.
1974, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 112 pages, 26 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kodansha Int / Tokyo
$550.00 - Out of stock
Very rare first 1974 edition of acclaimed female Japanese photographer Ruiko Yoshida's powerful ode to Harlem. Born in Hokkaido in 1938, Yoshida witnessed discrimination against the Ainu, an indigenous peoples native to northern Japan, and much of her work since has been focused on discrimination in society around the world. Harlem : Black Angels is a collection of Yoshida's breath-taking photographs of Harlem in the late 1960s, one of the largest black communities in the world, where she settled after majoring in photojournalism at Columbia University. She married an African American man with whom she had a child. Their daily lives, and the community of Harlemites in the midst of cultural revolution, became the subject of her photographs. The images seem to show a complete assimilation into black culture that had not been depicted by non-black artists at the time and rarely since. Yoshida captures both the time and place with uncanny virtuosity, blurring the frontiers between a personal and an objective documentary of a uniquely vibrant era Harlem. From her touching pictures of the children, to the Vietnam protests, Angela Davis, the funeral of Malcolm X, the Jazz musicians (Coltrane, Davis, Gillespie, Coleman...), the street festivals, the markets, The Black Panthers, Yoshida's gravure images are captioned in both Japanese and English, evoking the powerful sentiments of the time and the spirit of the people.
"Ruiko Yoshida's photographs of Harlem in the early 1970s brilliantly capture various aspects of the culture and the times, showing a side of the U.S. that she felt her Japanese contemporaries knew little about. In the process she created a compelling work that offers an incisive critique of racial hierarchies in the U.S. that, despite its deeply felt humanism, is missing from Bruce Davidson's East 100th Street."—photo-eye
Little known in the West until a reprint in 2010, Harlem : Black Angels has become a jewel of Japanese photo-journalism and a testament to the great breadth of postwar Japanese photobooks. Pictures included in this book were part of the exhibition “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power”
Includes text in both Japanese and English by poet Hajime Kijima.
Very Good copy in original publishers plastic dust jacket and original BLUE obi-strip. Dust jacket with the usual shrinkage and wear due to age. Otherwise cover, obi and interior pages VG—NF, preserved by dust jacket all these years. A most complete copy.
1985 / 1993, Japanese
Softcover, 72 pages, 21 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Photographers' Association / Japan
$70.00 - Out of stock
First published in 1985 by the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Photographers' Association, Testament of The Atomic Bomb Survivor presents an unsettling and profound collection of photographs taken by the "hibakusha" (A-bomb survivors) to serve as a stark reminder of the devastation that befell the Japanese people when the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, killing between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians. Richly illustrated glossy b/w photo book, accompanied by captions in Japanese, introduction in Japanese and English, and further historical and biographical information in Japanese.
"The thermal rays and the blast force from the atomic bomb took the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, destroyed all the buildings in central Hiroshima in an instant, and turned most of them into ashes. In addition, those who were unharmed at the time of the explosion but exposed to the radiation suffered the symptoms of the A-bomb disease caused by the residual radioactivity, and died one after another. There are still many survivors all over Japan as well as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who are suffering the aftereffects of the bombing. That is something that should never happen again. But we are in danger of having new destruction be- fore the old wounds are healed, and we cannot simply disregard the threat of human extinction. We, the Association of the Photographers of the atomic (Bomb) Destruction of Hiroshima, published a collection of photographs taken by us entitled, "The Time of the Destruction of Hiroshima," in August 1981. As hibakusha (A-bomb survivors) we cannot help but feel indignant at the present situation of the ever continuing production, testing, and de- ployment of nuclear weapons. The forty years following the destruction by the atomic bomb have seen seven of the twenty photographers who survived the bombing die. Those remaining are getting old and the average age of our group is above seventy years. We get impatient at the fact that the atomic bomb is the great enemy of humanity, but the people who can bear witness to what happened are fading out. Hundreds of thousands of people died in bitterness. I intend to offer my short remaining life to keep on telling the story as a witness, lest the death of those people be in vain, while I pray for the repose of their souls.—Yoshito Matsushige, Representative of the Association of the Photographers of the Atomic (Bomb) Destruction of Hiroshima
Very Good—NF copy of 1993 reprint of the 1985 edition. Only light wear.
1998, English / French
Softcover, 21.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Purple Institute / Paris
$220.00 - In stock -
The scarce third issue (of eight total, published between 1998-2001) of Olivier Zahm's short-lived, erotically charged photography journal "Purple Sexe". This issue profusely illustrated throughout, containing portfolios by Anette Aurell, Vanessa Beecroft, Ben Cho, Claude Closky, Yasmine Eslami, Jason Farrer, Carolina Gonzales, Jamil Gs, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Bernadette Van-Huy, Richard Kern's photoshoot of Lucy McKenzie, Chris Moor, Justine Parsons, Jack Pierson, Terry Richardson, Katja Rahlwes, Francois Rotger, Gilles Tonelado, and more. Art Direction by Christophe Brunnquell.
In 1992 Olivier Zahm and his partner Elein Fleiss printed the first issue of Purple Prose, a Parisian literary art zine that over the years has evolved into Purple Fashion Magazine. Soon after the birth of Purple Prose, Zahm created spin-off publications like Purple Sexe, Purple Fiction and what we now know and love, Purple Fashion. Zahm aimed at fusing together his two worlds, fashion and art, in creating Purple and Purple Fashion. Purple Sexe remains one of the scarcest of the early Purple series', published in the same format as Purple Prose and Purple Fiction in late 1990s. A magazine devoted to sexuality, only 8 issues of Purple Sexe were ever published between 1998 - 2001, edited by Olivier Zahm and commencing the same year as Purple, which was a fusion of Purple Prose, Fiction, Fashion, and Sexe.
Very Good copy.