Tag: japanese

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10 Great Japanese Photo Books

Great Japanese Photo Books

Here is my list of 10 great Japanese photo books. The list is unordered and does not represent necessarily the greatest photo books there are. Japanese photography is amazing because it’s so diverse; all genres are so strongly represented. Myself I like certain kind of photography, so  I wanted to choose the ones that I love most.

Hotaru (Firefly)
Mizoguchi Yoshio

Kamaitachi
Hosoe Eikoh

Baby Baby
Kawashima Kotori

Satchin
Araki

Farewell Photography
Moriyama Daido

Nadia
Sawatari Hajime

Looking for Forest
Hayashida Setsuko

Nadya’s Village
Motohashi Seiichi

Degree Zero
Nakahira Takuma

Love and Death
Araki

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Notes:

  1. Although I like Miraichan by Kawashima Kotori and it’s important photo book I like Baby Baby even more . It’s lesser known, so it deserves a mention.
  2. I simply cannot mention Araki without mentioning both Love and Death and Satchin since both are his signature work.
  3. Hayashida Setsuko’s photo book “Looking for Forest 「森をさがす」of my hometown is a fantastic photo book.
  4. Although Moriyama Daido has published several important photo books I felt Farewell Photography is his strongest work.
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Amy

Amy

With Amy in one rainy December afternoon in Tokyo.

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Weekend of Photos

I enjoyed taking photos of my friends during the weekend. I felt there was no need to explain much by words. I was just there.

Then, this invisible communication made me feel warm.

Araki said once that photography needs femininity. I don’t think he meant that we need to take photos of women, but we should take photos having woman’s mind.

Honey_Forest5_Jaakko

Saori-River_Jaakko

Honey_Forest3_Jaakko

Saori-River3_Jaakko

Honey_Forest_Jaakko

Saori-River2_Jaakko

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Regarding Japanese Photo Magazines

I really hate how in Japanese photo magazines include camera and lens info to the pictures, often superimposed over the image. Anyone who has a little understanding how cameras work, focal length, aperture and shutter speed can be figured out just by looking at the photo. It is not exactly rocket science..  And chef’s don’t superimpose the manufacturer and type of their pans and kettles to the food, right?

But further more, this habit of including the information to the image just shows the materialistic value of today’s photo book publishing, photography becomes a cheap advertisement for camera makers and the artistic meaning of the picture is tarnished if not destroyed completely.

I was glad that Nippon Camera’s Nude Photo issue does not do this although the publication suffers from censorship and other editorial issues.

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People by Jaakko

My second photo book “People by Jaakko” will be available soon. These are my recent portraits, almost all are shot this year. Although the book is only a narrow selection of the portraits I’ve shot recently, I feel a kind of nice coherence in this selection. I think I have reached a kind of special turning point in my voyage as photographer, so to celebrate that, I decided to make this book.
Portrait photo books are often large and impractical to carry. But this book is only about A5 size, so it’s pretty portable. I like the form factor as a photographer. It’s not large, but large enough to carry the message.
This book will cost 2000円 (about 20USD) and will ship worldwide. This will be available from next week.

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Tatsuo Suzuki

I am big fan of Tatsuo Suzuki. His photos are really honest, confronting but in a very proper way. He is one of the rare, huge talents in Japanese street photography scene.

I wonder what he shoots with. Looks like maybe tri-x.

Definably check him out in flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tatsu001/