Filippo Maggia; Nobuyoshi Araki
Milano: Skira, 2019.

“Over 300 images by the most famous contemporary Japanese photographer from the 1960s to today. Nobuyoshi Araki (Tokyo, 1940) is known the world over for his controversial erotic portraits of Japanese women, often bound using the kinbaku (Japanese bondage) technique. A unique figure in contemporary photography, he has always found creative inspiration in his daily existence, without making any distinction between his personal life and public and professional practice. The Araki Effect offers a broad overview of his career: from the first series from 1963-1965, Satchin and His Brother Mabo, to Subway of Love, a large collection of images taken in the Tokyo subway between 1963 and 1972, the year he also made Autumn in Tokyo, which recounts the autumn he spent wandering through the city in the twilight hours. These are followed by Sentimental Night in Kyoto, less well-known than the famous Sentimental Journey, both tributes to his wife, Yoko; Balcony of Love, Death Reality, Tokyo Diary from 2017, and one of his latest collections, Araki’s Paradise from 2019. The power of Araki’s images lies precisely in the force they emanate, the essence of the feeling – be it pain or joy – that the Japanese master puts into every picture. Araki transforms the set into a stage on which only he and the subject exist.” (publisher’s blurb)

Leslie Kee
[Tokyo]: Danny & Teddy Press, 2013.

Photodocumentation of fashion label Dsquared2’s 2013 SS men and women collection by Japan based Singaporean photographer Leslie Kee (1971-). Kee is a successful commercial photographer with numerous big brand clients. His work has been published in fashion magazines including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Rolling Stone and taken portraits of celebrities including Madonna, Beyonce, Kate Moss, Lady Gaga, Yoko Ono, Jackie Chan, and many others. This copy inscribed by Leslie Kee.

Jan Philipzen
[Gent]: Art Paper Editions, 2020.

“Started as a visual diary, Ravedeath Convention soon grew into a hybrid of autobiography and fiction. While love, joy and friendship are explored, violence and excess come about too, often captured only as traces and symptoms. A collision of different, occasionally mismatched, cultural symbols stresses the all-embracing blend of subcultures as a fundamental feature of our times. The first pictures taken at age thirteen, this series of black and white images is the edit of a continuous process of photographing, revisiting and reworking over a span of ten years. In the crippled prints the physical presence of body and photograph merge, celebrating human imperfection. The title references Tim Hecker’s album ‘Ravedeath 1972′.” (publisher’s blurb)

Michael Jang
[Los Angeles]: Atelier Editions, 2019.

“San Francisco-based photographer Michael Jang spent nearly four decades working as a successful commercial portrait photographer. Unbeknownst to the world, however, he was simultaneously assembling a vast archive of thousands of remarkable images documenting, variously: college days, Hollywood celebrities, would-be weather presenters, San Francisco street scenes, his family, Bay Area punks and adolescent garage bands. Jang revealed nothing of his ever-expanding, eclectic archive for almost 40 years until 2001, when he submitted a number of images for consideration to San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. Jang’s work attracted immediate acclaim, and for the past decade he has continued to unveil his considerable oeuvre in national and international exhibitions and monographs. The photographer’s first major monograph, Who Is Michael Jang? highlights Jang’s most important bodies of work. Introduced by his longtime collaborator and SFMOMA curator emerita of photography, Sandra Phillips, this volume offers readers a long-overdue introduction to Jang’s incredible images.” (publisher’s blurb)