Miyako no Kao (Visages of a Metropolis). Photographs by Yutaka Takanashi. Designed by Matsuhista Kouichi, Inter Press Corp., Tokyo, 1989. unpaged (appx 100 pp.) Large folio (17 x 12 in.) First printing. SIGNED on preliminary page (in English) with silver paint marker. Clothbound with debossed gilt design front, rear, and spine. No dust jacket as issued. 4 pp. folded rice paper insert with captions (in Japanese). Two-piece card slipcase with printed label.
A rare publication by one of the original Provoke members. Highly recommended!
The monograph Yutaka Takanashi. Photography 1965-74 won the Best Historical Book Award at the 2010 Rencontres d’Arlesfestival.
In Visages of a Metropolis as well as his earlier book Tokyoites, Takanashi addresses one of the perennial themes in earlier photography--and indeed in the whole history of Modernist art--namely, the uncanniness, anonymity, and occasional fearsomeness of the ordinary in contemporary urban life. More coolly objective than his brooding and pessimistic Provoke era masterpiece,Toshi-e: Takanashi's 1980s work is more Lewis Baltz than Daido Moriyama.
Excerpt from a 2009 exhibition review, The Changing Faces of Japan:
"Yutaka Takanashi’s work creates a biographical record of Tokyo and its residents. The world within his viewfinder gives the sense of a greater composition that extends beyond the focal center to include details to the extremities of the frame. Although employing a number of different methodologies his lens is consistently focused on the minutiae amongst the mélange."
Near Fine in Near Fine slipcase; wear to edges of outer case; with two small scratches; light foxing to label; boards foxed; crease to upper corner of signature page, internally clean and bright. |
back