Goliga Books

『日本写真集史６０〜７０年代』(video)

Ivan — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 03:11:04 +0000

Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s & 70s is about to hit the stores. We edited together some clips from our interviews with Eikoh Hosoe, Daido Moriyama, Nobuyoshi Araki, Ishiuchi Miyako, Takashi Homma, and photo-historian Ryuichi Kaneko. (English subtitles will be available very soon. Pardon the wait.) For more on the book here.

Sequence from Goliga Books on Vimeo.

石内都 Miyako Ishiuchi (video)

Ivan — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:03:22 +0000

自分がもっていた『Apartment』を取材の時に出したら、すぐに石内さんが「私の帯が違うよ」といいながら、サッサと「木村伊兵衛賞受賞」と大きく載せている帯を見せてもらいました。本が出た後に賞をとったら帯を作り直されたんです。

When I pulled out a copy of Apartment, Ishiuchi Miyako immediately said, “the bellyband on my copy is different.” Hers was the revised version that had prominently displayed “Winner of the Ihei Kimura Prize”.

J’adore Moriyama

Ivan — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:51:37 +0000

Daido Moriyama sent us a postcard saying he loves Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s & ’70s.

荒木経惟 x 野島康三 Araki with Nojima (video)

Ivan — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 02:41:56 +0000

Araki signed our new monograph publication on the work of Nojima Yasuzo. Araki was greatly influenced by Nojima’s work and for a time in the 1970s used the pen name “Nojima Tantaro,” which is how he signed the book.

“When something is good, you want to make it your own.”

Araki Nobuyoshi (a/k/a Nojima Tantaro) holds a copy of “Nojima Yasuzo”

Homma Takashi ホンマタカシ (video)

Ivan — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 07:16:43 +0000

ホンマさんの頭てっぺんでは本人が執筆した『たのしい写真／よい子のための写真教室』（平凡社発行）です。左手は弊社の『日本写真集史１９５８年〜１９８６年』（赤々舎発行）を持って下さっています。

ホンマタカシ　Takashi Homma Interview from Goliga Books on Vimeo.

「野島康三ー肖像の核心展」9月29日〜11月15日

Ivan — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 06:34:49 +0000

Exhibition info

野島展チラシ表
 野島展チラシ裏

写真集の情報

Le Goth, c’est Chic! Book Signing in Paris

Ivan — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 02:40:58 +0000

C’est super! Tiffany Godoy will be appearing at Colette in Paris on April 25th, 2009, from 17:00 to 18:00 to sign copies of Japanese Goth.

Sachi and Yuka from Kokushoku Sumire

Prizes to the best dressed goth-lolita-punx. Join us!

Colette, 213 rue Saint-Honoré 75001 Paris.

Style Deficit Disorder – the Harajuku handbook

Ivan — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:05:00 +0000

When Tiffany was out bouncing from city to city, promoting Style Deficit Disorder: Harajuku Street Fashion * Tokyo, she ran into a few friends who were keen to take a look at the finished product, including Viktor & Rolf, Patricia Field and Cathy Horyn. Here are some snaps.

Eyezon Sculpture Now in Production

Ivan — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:29:00 +0000

Coinciding with the release of our upcoming book Killer Kaiju, artist Mark Nagata has designed a two-foot tall giant, fiberglass sculpture. The initial models are underway!

Details to come.

Japanese Photography in Music News

Ivan — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:37:41 +0000

In the last several weeks two bands — U2 and Antony & the Johnsons — have released new studio albums. While the two may not have anything in common musically, both albums use Japanese photography as their cover art. The album The Crying Light (2009), by Antony and the Johnsons, has a CD jacket using a 1977 photograph by Naoya Ikegami of dancer Kazuo Ohno. U2’s No Line on the Horizon (2009) uses a photograph by Hiroshi Sugimoto from his on-going series of seascapes.

Both covers dispense with all other design elements, treating the images like plates in a photobook. There is a marked absence of typography and there aren’t any design flourishes obscuring the photographs. It does help that both images were originally shot in a square format and are arresting images on their own, to say the least. In the case of the U2 album, they’ve gone so far as to put a white border around the image.

The presentation and treatment of photography as such on a CD jacket is interesting on its own. But this is an interesting moment for Japanese photography too, and for its level of popular appreciation.

The study of subtle gradations in black and white is a quintessential hallmark of Japanese photography. In the air about the dancer Kazuo Ohno on the Antony & the Johnsons sleeve there is a nebulous glow. The same ether-like quality is in the foreground of the seascape on the U2 cover. In both these compositions, the photographers mix that subtle tonal gradation with an element of strong contrast: the horizon line and the form of the dancer. Both the line that bisects Sugimoto’s seascape and the dancer of Ikegami’s photograph are gestures that engage the photograph.

The monochromatic square format alone signals an attention to formalism in the photographers’ approach. In the case of U2, I’m not exactly sure what the connection to the music may be beyond, perhaps, a reduction of elements. Their other albums covers have made use of black-and-white photography but the degree of minimalism is particular here. In the case of Antony & the Johnsons, the thematic connection with Ohno is fairly overt. The album is dedicated to the dancer and the music has a thematic connection with the dance.

Either way, it is exciting to see Japanese photography find a resonance across cultural and artistic disciplines. I’m pleased the photographers agreed to let work be used.