International Center of Photography Library
Photobooks are like candy. Temptation is constant. And, if you don’t watch out, your bookshelves begin to bulge and overflow. This necessitates the unpleasant task of making more space for new acquisitions – a process that often requires picking and choosing among your favorite children. Decisions are further complicated by the discovery of books that… Continue reading Japanese Photobooks at the ICP Library: Revisited
Over the last few years, a growing interest in Japanese photoobooks has fueled an explosion in reprints and re-editions of many of the hard to find classic Japanese photobooks of the postwar period. With the cost of the original releases way beyond the budget of average photobook buyers, the reprints have become the only means… Continue reading Recent Japanese Photobook Reprints
10x10 Japanese Photobooks As part of 10x10 Japanese Photobooks, a pop-up reading room of 100 Japanese photobooks at the ICP-Bard MFA Studios from September 28-30, 2012 and an online resource space at Photo(o)lia, Monsters & Madonnas features one 10x10 reading room specialist per day. Reading room and online contributors have each been asked to suggest… Continue reading 10×10 Reading Room (Day 10): Akio Nagasawa / BLD Gallery
As an adult, I have always loved children’s books. Before I had kids, I used to position myself close to other people’s children in bookstores as I indulged my picture book habit. The idea was to give the appearance that I was somehow connected to someone else’s unsuspecting child and therefore “vetted” as a children’s… Continue reading Children’s Photobooks: Not Just for Children
A year ago in this blog, Matthew Carson highlighted some of the lesser-known classics in the ICP Library collection. One of the books he wrote about was Ed van der Elsken’s Sweet Life (1966). As one of my all-time favorite photobooks, Sweet Life is an incredibly beautiful collection of rich inky high contrast gravure images… Continue reading Ed van der Elsken and Eikoh Hosoe: A 30-Year Dialogue
From the mid-1990s onward, a new generation of Japanese photographers, which included many women, fluidly began mixing and matching traditional and modern subjects. Probing both the national sense of uncertainty that resulted from the collapse of the 1980s Japanese bubble economy and the changing role of women, the photography from this period can best be… Continue reading Caught Between Two Worlds: Japanese Photobooks from the Mid-1990s to the Present – Russet Lederman
The current Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945 exhibition on view at the International Center of Photography provides a good platform to discuss Japanese photobooks which deal with the development of a postwar Japanese identity that synthesized the horrors of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings. In the process of healing and creating a truly original visual language,… Continue reading The Impact of Hiroshima & Nagasaki on Japanese Photobooks – Russet Lederman
Japanese Provoke Era Reprints and Facsimiles in the ICP Library by Russet Lederman This second in a series of blog posts to explore Japanese photobooks and periodicals in the International Center of Photography’s library and permanent collection focuses on reprints and facsimile of well-known 1960s and ‘70s Provoke Era photobooks. During this period in Japan,… Continue reading Japanese Provoke Era Reprints and Facsimiles – Russet Lederman
Monsters & Madonnas 