From darkly fascinating photographs of ravens to humorous
self-portraits, Fukase created images of enormous emotional power
Among the most radical and original photographers of his generation,
Masahisa Fukase was famous for The Solitude of Ravens (1991), in which
these birds of doom, in flocks or alone, blacken the pages of the book
in inky, somber, calligraphic clusters; in 2010 it was voted the best
photobook of the past 25 years by the British Journal of Photography.
Fukase also has a lesser-known corpus of collages, self-portraits,
photographs reworked as sketches, black-and-white prints, Polaroids and
more. This book brings together all of his work for the very first time.
Its editors, Simon Baker, director of the Maison européenne de la
photographie, Paris, and Tomo Kosuga, director of the Masahisa Fukase
Archives, Tokyo, have assembled 26 series from Fukase's oeuvre,
including Memories of Father; The Solitude of Ravens; his portraits
of cats; his famous self-portraits taken in a bathtub with a waterproof
camera; and many previously unpublished works. Fukase tried his hand at
everything, and this essential volume, at more than 400 pages, at last
reveals the full breadth of his imagination in an English-language
publication.
