Fukuhara Shinzõ
1931
Book cover for Shinzu Fukuhara "Beautiful West Lake" (okyo: Japan Photographic Society, 1931)

Book cover
Swann Galleries - New York
Courtesy of Swann Galleries (Auction, May 15, 2008, #2146, Lot 87)
 
Illustrated with 24 reproductions of Fukuhara's artfully serene photographs. 4to, paper-covered flexible boards with a paper title label, lightly foxed and soiled; original silver-stamped pictorial slipcase; worn. first edition, one of 500 numbered copies.
 
As the heir to the Shiseido cosmetics company in Tokyo, Fukuhara studied pharmacology at Columbia University, in New York. He returned to Japan and founded the Japan Photographic Society (1924), which became a prominent amateur photographers'' group, promoting the possibility of photography as a creative form of expression. From this platform Fukuhara espoused the importance of the gradation of light and shadow and the need to express the Japanese spirit. His slogan was "light with its harmony."
 
LL/28624