Lot 282: KIKUJI KAWADA

KIKUJI KAWADA

Chizu -- The Map. Designed by Kohei Sugiura. Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, 1965.

Octavo (230 x 150 mm). 49 black and white photographs, 23 4-panel black and white gatefolds, folded broadside on brown paper laid-in. Original black paper-covered boards, original illustrated dust-jacket printed recto and verso, original printed die-cut paper chemise, original printed cardboard slipcase (dust-jacket with very light wear at the extremities, slipcase spine lightly browned as often).

FIRST EDITION. 'THE MOST BRILLIANTLY DESIGNED JAPANESE BOOK OF ITS CENTURY' (Keyes), it is 'an extraordinarily refined, avant-garde book object' (101 Books). 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... [he] has conjured up a brilliant simile for the photograph itself -- scientific record, memory trace, cultural repository, puzzle and guide' (The Photobook). An excellent example of a very fragile book. 101 Books, pp.174-77; Auer, p.445; Keyes, Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan 66; The Open Book, pp.212-13; The Photobook, vol. I, pp.286-87; Kaneko & Vartanian, Japanese Photobooks, pp.86-93.

'We are adrift in an era without courage, ambition, action, or even beautiful memories. Ask! Today, where is our map? Where is our vision and our brilliant order?'

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