Eikoh Hosoe - Kamaitachi, Aperture 2005

Kamaitachi

Eikoh Hosoe

This sumptuous reprint of Hosoe Eikoh's 1966 classic, Kamaitachi, is an exquisite example of the photography book as a malleable form. This new incarnation of Hosoe’s photography has resulted in a fresh creation, directly springing from the original body of work. Fine craftsmanship underscores the entire project. The trickster nature of Hosoe’s photography demands such extremes of printing and bookmaking. Fans of Japanese culture, for a little more than the cost of the prix-fixe sushi dinner at New York restaurant Masa, you can own one of the classics of Japanese photography. More than 35 years after it first appeared, Kamaitachi, a long out-of-print masterwork by Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe, gets its first publication outside Japan.

 

Not just a reprint but a recreation in collaboration with the photographer and in homage to the innovative original, this limited edition holds 42 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.

 

Silk-screened cloth cover housed in a Tadanori Yokoo designed deluxe clamshell box

42 black-and-white tritone images with gatefolds
Pages: 132
Size: 16 x 12.8 inches
Publisher: Aperture
Publication Date: 2005

Signed and limited to an edition of 500

 

Available from the gallery for $400