For a language to come

Takuma Nakahira
For a language to come
Photographs: Takuma Nakahira
Text: Takuma Nakahira
Publisher: Fudo-sha
192 pages
Pictures: 103
Year: 1970
Comments: Hardcover with jacket and card slipcase, 300 x 212 mm. First edition, 1970. Gravure printing. Included in Martin Parr & Gerry Badger, The Photobook, vol. I, p.292-293 ; Ryuichi Kaneko & Ivan Vartanian, The Japanese Photobooks of the 1960's and 1970's, p.130-133. Very good condition other than some wears to the edges of the dust jacket as usual. Inside it's like new condition. Very scarce and collectible copy.
"Through his photographs and writings Takuma Nakahira was both the chief polemicist for the Provoke group and its political conscience. Along with Moriyama's Sashin yo Sayonara (Bye Bye Photography), his book Kitarubeki Kotoba no Tameni (For a language to come) marks the apogee of the Provoke period. It exhibits all the characteristics of the Provoke style - an unabashed revelling in "bad" photographic technique, the mannerisms of the New York School pushed to the edge of coherence. These qualities would tend to make the casual reader bracket it with Moriyama's masterpiece, yet a closer look at Nakahira's book reveals that Nakahira's sensibility is quite different. Althoug the more political of the two, Nakahira didt not photograph "political" subjects directly, but utilized a troubled lyricism to express his disaffection with the colonization of Japan by American consumerism. Whereas Moriyama is jumpy and frenetic in tone, Nakahira displays a brooding calm. For a language to come closes with several shots of the sea, and the book's narrative is punctured at intervals with marine images. Far from suggesting boundless space, this is a dark, bleak and menacing sea, with the consistency of soup, a metaphor for claustrophobia and a narrowing of horizons.
The other overwhelming metaphor in the book is fire, an apocalyptic, post-Hiroshima conflagration, often expressed indirectly in Nakahira's night pictures with swathes of burned-out lens flare. These "natural" metaphors - water and fire - remind us that this is essentially a "landscape" book, though a landscape of the mind. The two, however, are inextricably related (...). These are sad, beautiful pictures of half-light - and half-life. They are quintessential Provoke images, and stand for much postwar Japanese photography prior to the 1980s."
Martin Parr & Gerry Badger, The Photobook: A History, vol.I















more books by Takuma Nakahira
-
Okinawa, Amami, Tokara 1974-1978
by Takuma Nakahira
sold -
Overflow (arriving soon)
by Takuma Nakahira
Euro 40 -
Degree Zero - Yokohama
by Takuma Nakahira
sold
more books tagged »seventies« | >> see all
-
Machi – Town
by Yutaka Takanashi
sold -
Senjo / Battlefield (First edt first printing)
by Kyoichi Sawada
sold -
Yokosuka Story (Vintage Signed)
by Miyako Ishiuchi
price on request -
My America - Non fiction
by Yoshihiro Tatsuki
sold -
Night and Day
by David Armstrong
sold -
Strangely Familiar
by Peter Mitchell
sold
more books tagged »japanese photobook« | >> see all
-
Minamata Disease
by Fumiaki (Shisei) Kuwabara
sold -
Pretty Woman (Signed and numbered)
by Daido Moriyama
sold -
FEIETON (SIGNED)
by Tsuyoshi Mochizuki
sold -
Ryusei hanabi
by Collective
sold -
Kagerou
by Yusuke Takagi
sold -
E-HON (picture book) SIGNED
by Shuntaro Tanikawa
sold
more books tagged »provoke« | >> see all
-
The Japanese Box
by Collective
sold -
Toshi-he (Towards the City)
by Yutaka Takanashi
sold -
PROVOKE MAGAZINES (SIGNED)
by Collective
sold -
Provoke (complete set of 3 volumes + number 4/5) 1968-1969-1970
by Provoke group
price on request -
Provoke (3 vol.) 1968-1969
by Provoke group
sold -
Yutaka Takanashi
by Yutaka Takanashi
Euro 75
more books tagged »Takuma Nakahira« | >> see all
-
Provoke 4 & 5: First Abandon the World of Pseudo-Certainty
by Provoke group
sold -
A Battlefield in the city
by Collective
sold -
Provoke : Between Protest and Performance : Photography in Jap...
by Provoke group
sold
more books tagged »japanese« | >> see all
-
Mirage (Signed)
by Daido Moriyama
Euro 120 -
DYUF! (signed)
by Masato Chiba
sold -
Utsutsu no yami
by Yoshiichi Hara
sold -
Tokyo chikan moyō
by Collective
sold -
Japan, a Photo Theater II
by Daido Moriyama
sold -
Taigan (Signed)
by Arata Dodo
sold
Books from the Virtual Bookshelf josefchladek.com