For a language to come
![Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come](https://www.placartphoto.com/media/PlacArt/Book_Image/image/67227/scalex/360;takuma_nakahira_for_a_language_to_come.jpg)
Takuma Nakahira
For a language to come
Photographs: Takuma Nakahira
Text: Takuma Nakahira
Publisher: Fudo-sha
192 pages
Pictures: 103
Year: 1970
Comments: Hardcover with jacket and card slipcase, 300 x 212 mm. First edition, 1970. Gravure printing. Included in Martin Parr & Gerry Badger, The Photobook, vol. I, p.292-293 ; Ryuichi Kaneko & Ivan Vartanian, The Japanese Photobooks of the 1960's and 1970's, p.130-133. Very good condition other than a small tear to the spin of the dust jacket. Very scarce.
"Through his photographs and writings Takuma Nakahira was both the chief polemicist for the Provoke group and its political conscience. Along with Moriyama's Sashin yo Sayonara (Bye Bye Photography), his book Kitarubeki Kotoba no Tameni (For a language to come) marks the apogee of the Provoke period. It exhibits all the characteristics of the Provoke style - an unabashed revelling in "bad" photographic technique, the mannerisms of the New York School pushed to the edge of coherence. These qualities would tend to make the casual reader bracket it with Moriyama's masterpiece, yet a closer look at Nakahira's book reveals that Nakahira's sensibility is quite different. Althoug the more political of the two, Nakahira didt not photograph "political" subjects directly, but utilized a troubled lyricism to express his disaffection with the colonization of Japan by American consumerism. Whereas Moriyama is jumpy and frenetic in tone, Nakahira displays a brooding calm. For a language to come closes with several shots of the sea, and the book's narrative is punctured at intervals with marine images. Far from suggesting boundless space, this is a dark, bleak and menacing sea, with the consistency of soup, a metaphor for claustrophobia and a narrowing of horizons.
The other overwhelming metaphor in the book is fire, an apocalyptic, post-Hiroshima conflagration, often expressed indirectly in Nakahira's night pictures with swathes of burned-out lens flare. These "natural" metaphors - water and fire - remind us that this is essentially a "landscape" book, though a landscape of the mind. The two, however, are inextricably related (...). These are sad, beautiful pictures of half-light - and half-life. They are quintessential Provoke images, and stand for much postwar Japanese photography prior to the 1980s."
Martin Parr & Gerry Badger, The Photobook: A History, vol.I
![Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come](https://www.placartphoto.com/media/PlacArt/Book_Image/image/67228/scalex/410;takuma_nakahira_for_a_language_to_come.jpg)
![Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come](https://www.placartphoto.com/media/PlacArt/Book_Image/image/67229/scalex/410;takuma_nakahira_for_a_language_to_come.jpg)
![Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come](https://www.placartphoto.com/media/PlacArt/Book_Image/image/67230/scalex/410;takuma_nakahira_for_a_language_to_come.jpg)
![Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come](https://www.placartphoto.com/media/PlacArt/Book_Image/image/67231/scalex/410;takuma_nakahira_for_a_language_to_come.jpg)
![Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come](https://www.placartphoto.com/media/PlacArt/Book_Image/image/67232/scalex/410;takuma_nakahira_for_a_language_to_come.jpg)
![Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come](https://www.placartphoto.com/media/PlacArt/Book_Image/image/67217/scalex/410;takuma_nakahira_for_a_language_to_come.jpg)
![Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come](https://www.placartphoto.com/media/PlacArt/Book_Image/image/67218/scalex/410;takuma_nakahira_for_a_language_to_come.jpg)
![Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come](https://www.placartphoto.com/media/PlacArt/Book_Image/image/67219/scalex/410;takuma_nakahira_for_a_language_to_come.jpg)
![Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come](https://www.placartphoto.com/media/PlacArt/Book_Image/image/67220/scalex/410;takuma_nakahira_for_a_language_to_come.jpg)
![Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come](https://www.placartphoto.com/media/PlacArt/Book_Image/image/67221/scalex/410;takuma_nakahira_for_a_language_to_come.jpg)
![Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come](https://www.placartphoto.com/media/PlacArt/Book_Image/image/67222/scalex/410;takuma_nakahira_for_a_language_to_come.jpg)
![Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come](https://www.placartphoto.com/media/PlacArt/Book_Image/image/67223/scalex/410;takuma_nakahira_for_a_language_to_come.jpg)
![Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come](https://www.placartphoto.com/media/PlacArt/Book_Image/image/67224/scalex/410;takuma_nakahira_for_a_language_to_come.jpg)
![Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come](https://www.placartphoto.com/media/PlacArt/Book_Image/image/67225/scalex/410;takuma_nakahira_for_a_language_to_come.jpg)
![Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come Takuma Nakahira,For a language to come](https://www.placartphoto.com/media/PlacArt/Book_Image/image/67226/scalex/410;takuma_nakahira_for_a_language_to_come.jpg)
more books by Takuma Nakahira
-
Okinawa, Amami, Tokara 1974-1978
by Takuma Nakahira
sold -
Overflow
by Takuma Nakahira
sold -
Degree Zero - Yokohama
by Takuma Nakahira
sold
more books tagged »japanese« | >> see all
-
Orphée (Signed)
by Tokyo Rumando
sold -
New York (with 1st obi)
by Keizo Kitajima
sold -
Hikari to kage no shima
by Takashi Ishimine
sold -
Kéntauros
by Bishin Jūmonji
sold -
Nippon Gekijo Shashincho / Japan, a Photo-Theater (Signed)
by Daido Moriyama
sold -
Mass
by Hiroshi Takizawa
Euro 70
more books tagged »seventies« | >> see all
-
Salome (pocket version)
by Tetsuya Ichimura
sold -
Belleville sur un nuage (Special Edt/5 with 2 prints) LAST ONE!
by Collective
sold -
Marie's Seven Days in Molokai
by Kishin Shinoyama
sold -
Asakusa Jidai (The Age of Asakusa)
by Ryo Oshida
Euro 150 -
A fine day / Hareta Hi (SIGNED)
by Kishin Shinoyama
sold -
YANOMAMI
by Claudia Andujar
sold
more books tagged »japanese photobook« | >> see all
-
Someday, Somewhere
by Yasuhiro Ishimoto
Euro 1500 -
Tokyo
by Sohei Nishino
sold -
Kagerou
by Yusuke Takagi
sold -
E-HON (picture book) SIGNED
by Shuntaro Tanikawa
sold -
KAGERO / MAYFLY (SIGNED AND NUMBERED)
by Daido Moriyama
sold -
Pretty Woman (Signed and numbered)
by Daido Moriyama
sold
more books tagged »Takuma Nakahira« | >> see all
-
Provoke (complete set of 3 volumes + number 4/5) 1968-1969-1970
by Provoke group
sold -
Provoke 4 & 5: First Abandon the World of Pseudo-Certainty
by Provoke group
sold -
PROVOKE MAGAZINES (SIGNED)
by Collective
sold -
A Battlefield in the city
by Collective
sold -
The Japanese Box
by Collective
sold -
Provoke : Between Protest and Performance : Photography in Jap...
by Provoke group
sold
more books tagged »provoke« | >> see all
-
Yutaka Takanashi
by Yutaka Takanashi
sold -
Photography 1965-74 (SPECIAL EDITION WITH PRINT)
by Yutaka Takanashi
sold -
Provoke : Between Protest and Performance : Photography in Jap...
by Provoke group
sold -
Provoke (3 vol.) 1968-1969
by Provoke group
sold -
Farewell Photography
by Daido Moriyama
sold -
Farewell Photography
by Daido Moriyama
sold
Books from the Virtual Bookshelf josefchladek.com