Lot 84: KIKUJI KAWADA

KIKUJI KAWADA
Chizu -- The Map. 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 light wear at extremities including very small chips at some corners, slipcase spine lightly and evenly browned).

FIRST EDITION, SIGNED BY KAWADA. '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). A very good copy with all leaves firm in the binding. Keyes, Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan 66; The Photobook, vol. I, pp. 286-87; 101 Books, pp.174-77 ('an extraordinarily refined, avant-garde book object'); The Open Book, pp.212-13.

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