Kanendo WatanabeKishi no Machi (A Town Already Seen)

 

Kishi no Machi [A Town Already Seen]. Photographs by Kanendo Watanabe. Text by Mieko Kanai (in Japanese). Shinchosha, Tokyo, 1980. 152 pp. Octavo (small size). Photo-illustrated wrappers in glossy dust jacket. Copperplate black-and-white reproductions . Matching slipcase with printed obi [belly band]. 

Reminiscent of the austere, minimalist style of New Topographics photographers (Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams, Joe Deal, etc..)-- but with atmospherics that are distinctly Surreal. As Vartanian and Kaneko describe in Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 1970s, Mieko Kanai's opening text is typical of the "i-novel" genre, in which narrative is based on the everyday life of the writer. But is also "very close in feel to Andre Breton's 1928 surrealist novel, Nadja...[the images] [evoke] the feeling of being lost in an unfamiliar town." Winner of the 1981 Ihei Kimura Prize. 

Soft cover, illustrated slipcase with obi. Included in the Japanese photo book by Kaneko and Vartanian p 228-231. Some spots to the slipcase and a small tear to obi.