Setting Sun

The recent rise in the West of Japanese photography makes "Setting Sun" a crucial document. The first anthology of its kind to appear in English, this book collects key texts written from the 1950s to the present by the country's most celebrated and controversial photographers, and illuminates a set of ideas, rules and aesthetics that are specific to Japanese culture, but often little known elsewhere. Contributors include Takuma Nakahira and Daido Moriyama, in whose landmark late-60s magazine "Provoke" a radically new direction in Japanese photography was set; Nobuyoshi Araki, the provocative and prolific chronicler of bound girls (among other subjects); and Eikoh Hosoe, whose collaborations with the Butoh dance master Hijikata and the novelist Mishima made him prominent as an intellectual figure as well as a photographer. In addition, there are selections from modern masters such as Masahisa Fukase, Takashi Homma, Takuma Nakahira and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Each chapter in the book is devoted to a central theme that is particular to Japanese photography, such as the role of nostalgia in a culture that has often sought to jettison its past amid the shadows of a war lost. The writings vary in form from diary entry to scholarly treatise, but all reflect a clear connection between word and image, one so essential that no comprehensive consideration of Japanese photography can be complete without it.

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 224
Publication date: 2005-11-15
Measurements: 6 x 8.44 x 0.76 inches
ISBN: 9781931788830

Ivan Vartanian est l auteur de Andy Warhol: Drawings and illustrations of the 1850s, Now Loading ; The Aesthetics of Web Graphics et TypoGraphics.
Ralph Gibson is an award-winning photographer whose works are in the collections of major museums worldwide. His previous books include “Light Strings: Impressions of the Guitar “(2004). He divides his time between New York City and Paris, France. Anne Wilkes Tucker is Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Les Paul is a revered guitarist.