For a language to come
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
more books by Takuma Nakahira
-
Okinawa, Amami, Tokara 1974-1978
by Takuma Nakahira
sold -
Overflow (arriving soon)
by Takuma Nakahira
Euro 40 -
Degree Zero - Yokohama
by Takuma Nakahira
sold
more books tagged »seventies« | >> see all
-
Non : Kangaku toso no kiroku
by Collective
sold -
OO! Shinjuku
by Shomei Tomatsu
sold -
Soul and soul
by Kiyoshi Suzuki
sold -
Koseki
by Collective
sold -
Erotoscope
by Collective
sold -
Salome
by Tetsuya Ichimura
sold
more books tagged »japanese« | >> see all
-
Child of Night and Sleep
by Ben Cope
sold -
Something Invisible (Signed and numbered to 100 copies)
by Hajime Inomata
sold -
THE MAD BROOM OF LIFE
by Kyoji Takahashi
sold -
Park City
by Keiko Sasaoka
sold -
Lips! Lips! Lips! (Signed and numbered copy/350)
by Daido Moriyama
sold -
Tono monogatari / Legends of Tono
by Masatoshi Naito
sold
more books tagged »japanese photobook« | >> see all
-
Ronde De Nuit
by Lewis Baltz
Euro 55 -
Shimotsui no kodomotachi / Children of Shimotsui (with obi)
by Nobuyuki Wakabayashi
sold -
Kagerou
by Yusuke Takagi
sold -
Ryusei hanabi
by Collective
sold -
Someday, Somewhere
by Yasuhiro Ishimoto
Euro 1500 -
APARTMENT (With Flyer and subscription form)
by Miyako Ishiuchi
price on request
more books tagged »Takuma Nakahira« | >> see all
-
The Japanese Box
by Collective
sold -
Provoke : Between Protest and Performance : Photography in Jap...
by Provoke group
sold -
A Battlefield in the city
by Collective
sold -
Provoke 4 & 5: First Abandon the World of Pseudo-Certainty
by Provoke group
sold -
Provoke (complete set of 3 volumes + number 4/5) 1968-1969-1970
by Provoke group
price on request -
Provoke : Between Protest and Performance : Photography in Jap...
by Provoke group
sold
more books tagged »provoke« | >> see all
-
Provoke (3 vol.) 1968-1969
by Provoke group
sold -
Photography 1965-74 (SPECIAL EDITION WITH PRINT)
by Yutaka Takanashi
sold -
Farewell Photography
by Daido Moriyama
sold -
Guevara Shashin Shu Che
by Light of Buenos
sold -
PROVOKE MAGAZINES (SIGNED)
by Collective
sold -
Farewell Photography
by Daido Moriyama
sold
Books from the Virtual Bookshelf josefchladek.com