Lot 61: Chizu -- The Map, 1959-65

KAWADA KIKUJI (b.1933)
Chizu -- The Map, 1959-65
Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, 6 August 1965.
Screened gravures of photographs by Kawada; poem 'MAP' by Oe Kenzaburo printed on separate sheet, folded & laid-in; book design by Sugiura Kohei; package design by Ishio Toshiro. First edition, signed by Kawada. Black boards, illustrated dust jacket, printed die-cut paper chemise & silkscreened cardboard slipcase. 9½ x 6¼in. (24.3 x 16cm.)

Szarkowski & Yamagishi (eds.), New Japanese Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1974, n.p.; Kawada Kikuji: Nihon no shashinka 33 [Japanese Photographers, vol.33], Iwanami Shoten, 1998, pls.1-2, 4-13; Roth (ed.), The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century, PPP Editions/Ruth Horowitz, 2001, pp.174-77; Tucker et al., The History of Japanese Photography, Yale/The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2003, p.246, pl.164; Roth (ed.), The Open Book: A History of the Photographic Book from 1878 to the Present, Hasselblad Center, 2004, pp.212-13; Parr & Badger, The Photobook: A History Volume 1, Phaidon, 2004, pp.286-87; Keyes, Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan, The New York Public Library/University of Washington, 2006, pp.256-61.

JAPANESE PHOTOGRAPHY SINCE 1960

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION, TOKYO


it was by far the most violent rays
that carved the shadows of
unknown dead persons, veritable maps in
human shape, on the stones in HIROSHIMA
with this map in our hands, we set out to
a new journey, but to where should we struggle along?

Nobel laureate OE KENZABURO from The Map

The Map, published on the 20th anniversary, to the day, of the bombing of Hiroshima, represents the pinnacle of Japanese photobooks in its integration of content and design. Extant copies in excellent condition -- such as the present lot -- are exceedingly rare.

Photographs from The Map were first shown outside Japan in the 1974 exhibition New Japanese Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The photobook The Map was recently included in the exhibition Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan at The New York Public Libraray (20 October 2006 -- 4 February 2007). Roger S. Keyes, the author of the accompanying book, describes it as 'one of the most beautiful and moving books of the entire twentieth century.' (p.12)

In Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art: Experimentations in the Public Sphere in Postwar Japan, 1950-1970, Charles Merewether comments on the emotive quality in Kawada's photograph of the Japanese flag:

Kawada's image of the Japanese flag...put a patriotic symbol back into circulation but as an icon that has lost its patina: crumpled as if vanquished, flattened rather than flying high, a memento of destruction and remembrance. (Getty Reserach Institute, 2007, pp.10-11)