Come up

Tetsuya Ichimura
Come up

Photographs: Tetsuya Ichimura

Text: Tetsuya Ichimura, Shin'ichi Kusamori, Jun Eto and Tomomi Ito

Publisher: Shashin Hyoron sha

48 pages

Year: 1971

Price: 500 €

Comments: Softcover in original acetate jacket. In a cardboard slipcase. Text in english and in japanese. First edition, 1971. Scarce collectible copy. Slightly wear on the slipcase (see pictures), spine of the slipcase torn otherwise a rather very fresh copy in good condition. Included in Kaneko & Vartanian's "Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 70s".

"What will he find eventually when a Japanese man, who experienced the death of his mother in his childhood, or a total termination of life, continues seeking the forms of what keep him alive in a large city which is changing nature into gray, inorganic ruins day by day? The answer will be the forms of life, nature, and respite from the din of everyday life. Urban life, however, offers such forms only in fragments, or what is worse, in consumptive fragments.

T. Ichimura's eyes convert these fragments into symbols, and he tries to extract life and nature from such symbols. His eroticism is formed during the process of converting the fragments into symbols through his sharp insight into the surrounding objects.

T. Ichimura's desire is always clouded with self-dislike, intercepted, and gasping. And the more his desire gasps, the more vivid his eroticism becomes."

Jun Eto