Kamaitachi (Signed)

Eikoh Hosoe
Kamaitachi (Signed)

Photographs: Eikoh Hosoe

Text: Shuzo Takiguchi & Toyoichiro Miyoshi

Publisher: Seigensha Art Publishing

132 pages

Year: 2005

Comments: Hardcover in a cardboard slipcase with shipping box, 385 x 315 mm. Each large image concealed within a blue gatefold that must be carefully opened before viewing. Reprint, 2005. Signed and numbered edition of 500 copies (published simultaneously by Aperture in an English edition of 500). Included in Martin Parr & Gerry Badger, The Photobook, vol.I, p. 284-285 ; Open Book 248-249; Auer 497. A wonderful reprint! In great condition.

Fans of Japanese culture, for a little more than the cost of the prix-fixe sushi dinner at New York restaurant Masa, you can own one of the classics of Japanese photography. More than 35 years after it first appeared, Kamaitachi, a long out-of-print masterwork by Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe, gets its first publication outside Japan. Not just a reprint but a recreation in collaboration with the photographer and in homage to the innovative original, this limited edition holds 40 black-and-white tritone images, each of which receives the scope of a gatefold. Slipcased and protected by a clamshell box, the book is not just a publication but an objet d’art in itself. Hosoe was known for pushing the boundaries of traditional photography through his interactions with important Japanese artists such as Butoh dancer Tasumi Hijikata and novelist Yukio Mishima. In Kamaitachi, he sought to recapture, with choreographic style, some of the lost landscapes and images of his childhood experience in the closing years of World War II.