Kishi no Machi (A Town Already Seen)

Kanendo Watanabe
Kishi no Machi (A Town Already Seen)

Photographs: Kanendo Watanabe

Text: Mieko Kanai

Publisher: Shincho sha

152 pages

Pictures: 52

Year: 1980

Comments: Soft cover, illustrated slipcase with obi. Included in the Japanese photo book by Kaneko and Vartanian p 228-231. Some spots to the slipcase and a small tear to obi.

Kishi no Machi [A Town Already Seen]. Photographs by Kanendo Watanabe. Text by Mieko Kanai (in Japanese). Shinchosha, Tokyo, 1980. 152 pp. Octavo (small size). Photo-illustrated wrappers in glossy dust jacket. Copperplate black-and-white reproductions . Matching slipcase with printed obi [belly band].

Reminiscent of the austere, minimalist style of New Topographics photographers (Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams, Joe Deal, etc..)-- but with atmospherics that are distinctly Surreal. As Vartanian and Kaneko describe in Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 1970s, Mieko Kanai's opening text is typical of the "i-novel" genre, in which narrative is based on the everyday life of the writer. But is also "very close in feel to Andre Breton's 1928 surrealist novel, Nadja...[the images] [evoke] the feeling of being lost in an unfamiliar town." Winner of the 1981 Ihei Kimura Prize.