“JUST OPENING IT IS A PLEASURE— AND THE SEDUCTION DOESN’T STOP THERE”

HOSOE, Eikoh. Kamaitachi. (Tokyo: Aperture, 2005). Folio, original white cloth photographically printed in black, original printed acetate dust jacket, original decorated laminated clamshell box. $1200.

Signed limited 2005 edition of Kamaitachi, number 29 of only 500 copies, with 33 rich double-page photogravures on gate-folded sheets printed solid blue on the rectos and the gravures on the versos, signed by Hosoe on a mounted label. In original decorative Tadanori Yokoo clamshell box.

In this 2005 faithful republication of Kamaitachi (1969), the second collaboration between Hosoe and dancer Tatsumi Hijikata, Hosoe retells in photographs the myth of Kamaitachi, "a weasel-like demon who purportedly haunted the area's rice fields and would slash any person he encountered." On a trip past the rice fields of the Tohoku region with his friend Hijikata, Hosoe "conceived the idea of shooting Hijikata in a series of tableaux that recreated the Kamaitachi legend. The result was a spontaneous and therefore intensely personal dance drama, a kind of exorcism using the local landscape and people" (Parr & Badger). "Printed in the most luscious photogravure imaginable, with blacks as deep as the ocean" (Parr & Badger, 282). Hosoe's photobooks are "so splendidly packaged that just opening [them] is a pleasure— and the seduction doesn't stop there" (Roth, 164). Text in English and Japanese. Parr & Badger, 284-85. See Open Book, 248-49.

Fine condition, signed.