Kyōko Wada

Ivan Vartanian

Ryūichi Kaneko

Lesley A. Martin

During the 1960s and 70s in Japan, the photobookthrough a combination of excellence in design, printing, and materialsovertook prints as a popular mode of artistic dissemination. This process has expanded to an extent where any discussion of Japanese photography now has to include the book work. Today, the most famous workssuch as Nobuyoshi Arakis Sentimental Journey and Eikoh Hosoes Man and Womancontinue to inspire artists internationally. Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 70s presents forty definitive publications from the era, piecing together an otherwise invisible history that has played out in tandem with photography as a medium. Included are some of the most influential works along with forgotten gems, placed within a larger historical and sociological context. Each book, beautifully reproduced through numerous spreads, is accompanied by an in-depth explanatory text and sidebars highlighting important editors, designers, themes, and periodicals. Lavishly produced, this unique publication is an ode to the distinct character and influence of the Japanese photobook.

Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and '70s

Makoto Azuma

Shunsuke Shiinoki

Flowers have been a universal cultural object for millennia. They are an important aesthetic element in everyday life worldwide, and have played a highly symbolic role in art throughout the ages. Over the past few years, Makoto Azuma has created a furor in the art world with his floral installations, in which he creates unusual new shapes from plants and flowers and their component parts. Inspired by the Japanese tradition of ikebana--the art of flower arranging--Azuma creates novel and previously unseen aesthetics by bringing together unusual plants that wouldn't usually meet in nature--some of them exotic --in extraordinary arrangements. Shunsuke Shiinoki, who opened the "haute-couture" florists Jardin des Fleurs in Tokyo in 2002 in association with Makoto Azuma, captured these exceptional floral installations in extraordinary photographs.

Kyōko Wada

Books

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