Kawada Kikuji
1965
Chizu. The Map

Gelatin silver print
23 x 15 cm
 
Bassenge Photography Auctions
19th - 21st Century Photography, 8 December 2021, Lot: 4222
 
101 Books, pp.174-77; Auer, p.445; Keyes, Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan 66; The Open Book, pp.212-13; The Photobook, vol. I, pp.286-87; Kaneko & Vartanian, Japanese Photobooks, pp.86-93. First edition, one of 700 copies. Designed by Kohei Sugiura. Published on the 20th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, this deeply moving memorial work is also one of the most avant-garde photobooks. "The most brilliantly designed Japanese book of its century" (Keyes), it is "an extraordinarily refined, avant-garde book object" (101 Books). The Map is the defining photobook of post-war Japan, and "the ultimate photobook-as-object" -- "no photobook has been more successful in combining graphic design with complex photographic narrative"; "Kawada's photographs are a masterly amalgam of abstraction and realism… [he] has conjured up a brilliant simile for the photograph itself -- scientific record, memory trace, cultural repository, puzzle and guide" (The Photobook).
 
LL/115585