Preview our FALL 2024 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.
EDITIONS XAVIER BARRAL
Masahisa Fukase
Introduction by Simon Baker. Text by Tomo Kosuga.
From darkly fascinating photographs of ravens to humorous self-portraits, Fukase created images of enormous emotional power
Among the most radical and original photographers of his generation, Masahisa Fukase was famous for The Solitude of Ravens (1991), in which these birds of doom, in flocks or alone, blacken the pages of the book in inky, somber, calligraphic clusters; in 2010 it was voted the best photobook of the past 25 years by the British Journal of Photography. Fukase also has a lesser-known corpus of collages, self-portraits, photographs reworked as sketches, black-and-white prints, Polaroids and more. This book brings together all of his work for the very first time.
Its editors, Simon Baker, director of the Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris, and Tomo Kosuga, director of the Masahisa Fukase Archives, Tokyo, have assembled 26 series from Fukase's oeuvre, including Memories of Father; The Solitude of Ravens; his portraits of cats; his famous self-portraits taken in a bathtub with a waterproof camera; and many previously unpublished works. Fukase tried his hand at everything, and this essential volume, at more than 400 pages, at last reveals the full breadth of his imagination in an English-language publication.
Born in 1934 on the island of Hokkaido, in the north of Japan, into a family of studio photographers, Masahisa Fukase began a career as a freelance reporter in the late 1960s. In 1971 he published his first photography book, consisting of group portraits of his family. In 1974, he cofounded the Workshop Photography School with Shomei Tomatsu, Eikoh Hosoe, Noriaki Yokosuka, Nobuyoshi Araki and Daido Moriyama; that same year, MoMA in New York dedicated a milestone exhibition to them (New Japanese Photography). In 1992, at the age of 58, following a fall, Fukase was maintained on life support until his death in 2012.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Masahisa Fukase.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
New York Times
Lucy Sante
Masahisa Fukase presents a comprehensive overview of this photographer, game for anything.
in stock $90.00
Free Shipping
UPS GROUND IN THE CONTINENTAL U.S. FOR CONSUMER ONLINE ORDERS
Featured spreads are from Editions Xavier Barral's beautiful 416-page monograph on Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase—best known for his influential 1991 black-and-white photobook, The Solitude of Ravens, and yet shown here to have been an artist of amazing range. Though he was known to have "expressed himself in darkness," Simon Baker writes, he turns out, "on closer inspection to have had a wildly playful nature, burning with the full power of the sun's rays when the mood took him. And while Fukase may have been defined by Ravens since its publication—in the public eye at least—his career long before this milestone was defined by powerfully experimental and boundary-challenging work that bridged documentary practice, surrealism, performance and autobiography, often all within a single image." continue to blog
Featured spreads are from Editions Xavier Barral's beautiful 416-page monograph on Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase—best known for his influential 1991 black-and-white photobook, The Solitude of Ravens, and yet shown here to have been an artist of amazing range. Though he was known to have "expressed himself in darkness," Simon Baker writes, he turns out, "on closer inspection to have had a wildly playful nature, burning with the full power of the sun's rays when the mood took him. And while Fukase may have been defined by Ravens since its publication—in the public eye at least—his career long before this milestone was defined by powerfully experimental and boundary-challenging work that bridged documentary practice, surrealism, performance and autobiography, often all within a single image." continue to blog
We are profoundly saddened by the loss of Xavier Barral, a towering figure in photography book publishing, who died at the age of 63 on February 19, 2019. A visionary with exquisite taste and an irrepressible passion for aesthetic adventure, Barral published books on such wildly disparate subjects as automata,nineteenth-century nocturnal wildlife photography,the construction of photographic forensic evidence, Mars and the Rosetta Comet, in addition to superb monographs on and artist’s books by Malick Sidibe,Sophie Calle,Josef Koudelka and Masahisa Fukase. We are honored to have had the chance to work with Barral, truly a publisher of the highest standards and always one to amaze. “I looked forward to seeing Xavier Barral, as he was so genuinely passionate about the projects he worked on,” writes Elisa Nadel, Artbook | D.A.P. Vice President and Director of Publisher Services. “He had an incredible sensibility and eye for photography and knew how to make each book so special. Through his unique personal design decisions—from the choice of paper to the quality of the binding type and the layout of the work itself—he always had the individual photographer in mind, which made every single book a treasure.” Featured image is reproduced from Masahisa Fukase. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 7.75 x 10.25 in. / 416 pgs / 160 color / 300 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $90.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $120 ISBN: 9782365112024 PUBLISHER: Editions Xavier Barral AVAILABLE: 9/25/2018 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA LA ASIA AU/NZ AFR ME
Published by Editions Xavier Barral. Introduction by Simon Baker. Text by Tomo Kosuga.
From darkly fascinating photographs of ravens to humorous self-portraits, Fukase created images of enormous emotional power
Among the most radical and original photographers of his generation, Masahisa Fukase was famous for The Solitude of Ravens (1991), in which these birds of doom, in flocks or alone, blacken the pages of the book in inky, somber, calligraphic clusters; in 2010 it was voted the best photobook of the past 25 years by the British Journal of Photography. Fukase also has a lesser-known corpus of collages, self-portraits, photographs reworked as sketches, black-and-white prints, Polaroids and more. This book brings together all of his work for the very first time.
Its editors, Simon Baker, director of the Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris, and Tomo Kosuga, director of the Masahisa Fukase Archives, Tokyo, have assembled 26 series from Fukase's oeuvre, including Memories of Father; The Solitude of Ravens; his portraits of cats; his famous self-portraits taken in a bathtub with a waterproof camera; and many previously unpublished works. Fukase tried his hand at everything, and this essential volume, at more than 400 pages, at last reveals the full breadth of his imagination in an English-language publication.
Born in 1934 on the island of Hokkaido, in the north of Japan, into a family of studio photographers, Masahisa Fukase began a career as a freelance reporter in the late 1960s. In 1971 he published his first photography book, consisting of group portraits of his family. In 1974, he cofounded the Workshop Photography School with Shomei Tomatsu, Eikoh Hosoe, Noriaki Yokosuka, Nobuyoshi Araki and Daido Moriyama; that same year, MoMA in New York dedicated a milestone exhibition to them (New Japanese Photography). In 1992, at the age of 58, following a fall, Fukase was maintained on life support until his death in 2012.
