Lot 101: KIKUJI KAWADA

KIKUJI KAWADA Chizu -- The Map . Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 1965. Octavo (230 x 150mm). 49 black and white photographs, 23 4-panel black and white gatefolds, folded broadside on brown paper laid-in. Original blackpaper covered boards, original illustrated dust-jacket, printed recto and verso, original printed die-cut paper chemise, original printed cardboard slipcase (light wear to dust-jacket extremities, light wear to the slipcase). FIRST EDITION, RARE. 'THE MOST BRILLIANTLY DESIGNED JAPANESE BOOK OF ITS CENTURY' (Keyes). 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... in the central metaphor of the map, and specifically, in the idea of the map as a series of interlocking trace marks, Kawada has conjured up a brilliant simile for the photograph itself -- scientific record, memory trace, cultural repository, puzzle and guide' ( The Photobook ). Design by Sugiura Kohei. 1 of 700 copies, the entire edition. AN EXCELLENT COPY WITH ALL LEAVES FIRM IN THE BINDING. Keyes, The Artist and the Book in Japan 66; The Photobook , vol. I, pp. 286-87; The Book of 101 Books , pp.174-77 ('AN EXTRAORDINARILY REFINED, AVANT-GARDE BOOK OBJECT'); The Open Book , pp.212-13.

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