Eikoh Hosoe: Kamaitachi
Aperture, 2005
An undisputed masterwork among Japanese photobooks, Eikoh Hosoe and Tatsumi Hijikata's "Kamaitachi" was originally released in 1969 as a limited edition of 1,000 copies. Hosoe, the renowned photographer, and Hijikata, the founder of ankoku butoh dance, had visited a farming village in northern Japan, where Hijikata improvised a performance inspired by the legend of a weasel-like demon named Kamaitachi. As Hosoe photographed Hijikata's spontaneous interactions with the landscape and with the people they encountered, the two artists together enacted an intense investigation of tradition and an exploration, both personal and symbolic, of contemporary convulsions in Japanese society.
In 2005, Aperture published a limited-edition facsimile in homage to the original, in close consultation with the artist; Not just a reprint but a recreation in collaboration with the photographer. This limited edition holds 40 black-and-white tritone images, each of which receives the scope of a gatefold. Slipcased and protected by a clamshell box, the book is not just a publication but an objet d'art in itself. Hosoe was known for pushing the boundaries of traditional photography through his interactions with important Japanese artists such as Butoh dancer Tasumi Hijikata and novelist Yukio Mishima. In "Kamaitachi," he sought to recapture, with choreographic style, some of the lost landscapes and images of his childhood experience in the closing years of World War II.
Eikoh Hosoe was born in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan, in 1933. He is an integral part of the history of modern Japanese photography, and remains a driving force not only for his own work, but also for his efforts as a teacher and ambassador, fostering artistic exchange between Japan and the outside world. He is the founder and director of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts and professor of photography at the Tokyo Institute of Polytechnics. Hosoe lives in Tokyo and is represented by the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York.
Signed and numbered edition of 500 copies.
copy #153
ISBN: 9781931788809
123 pages - 33 x 41 cm - 4kg