Nagare no uta [A Flowing Song] / Soul and Soul.

£1,500 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

Soul and Soul is Suzuki Kiyoshi's first book; it is a homage to his childhood home, which was close to the Joban coal mine in Fukushima Prefecture, one of the major coal mines in Japan, and a meditation on time. With energy use shifting towards oil, Suzuki witnessed the Japanese coal industry's gradual decline after World War II. Suzuki later befriended Robert Frank through Motomura Kazuhiko, and the two exchanged correspondence and photographs over many years. Like Frank, Suzuki developed a distinctly personal and somewhat cinematic aesthetic. His books are carefully sequenced, allowing for gradual unfolding narratives. Soul and Soul displays several traits that are consistent in his later books: a subjective relationship with his subject, layering of time, influences and referential images, and an interest in the way that chaos can permeate everyday life. First edition; oblong 4to (203 x 227 mm, 8 x 9 in); black-and-white photographs printed in relief halftone by Otake Bijutsu, Tokyo; light yellow endpapers, black cloth-covered boards, titles stamped in gold on spine, photo-illustrated dust-jacket, white, printed in black, light wear to extremities, nick to head of spine, short tear to top and to bottom edge of lower panel, fine in a near-fine dust-jacket; [92]pp. Japanese Photobook of the 1960s and '70s, pp188-191; For a New World to Come pp192-193 229; The Japanese Photobook 1912-1990 335 p417.

• Binding: Hardcover

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