Kanpon Sakuhin 38: Sphere

£450 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A book of Takei Takeo’s original poetry and photographs on the theme of ‘spheres’. This book is no.38 in Takei Kanpon Sakuhin ‘self-published works’ series. Amazingly, this was Takei’s first foray into photography. While book no.32 in the Kanpon Sakuhin series was illustrated with photography, the photos were not taken by Takei. When someone had suggested the idea to him, Takei realised that he did not even own a camera. Fascinated by the mesh-effect in photographs printed in newspapers, he decided to focus the images on dots, or spheres. Before narrowing down the selection for the book, he had used about 21 rolls of film and had taken approximately 250 photographs. To create a grainy, newspaper-like effect to the photographs, Takei printed the photographs in full-black colour, applying a mesh pattern to create the illusion of different tones. Although the book was printed in relief, the effect is similar to a screen print. The cut-out images, screen effect and layout gives this book a very avant garde feel. In the central spread there is an impressive photo of a sunset, which Takei had great difficulty achieving without camera flare. The final photo shows a perfectly round sun setting over an atmospheric landscape. The book was bound by Takei’s regular collaborator Yamamoto Kihei. Curiously, this copy seems to have a slight error, as there is a misregistered embossing next to the title label, which has been pasted in. It seems that this blemish was kept as is, and the book w

• Binding: Hardcover

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