NU.E (SIGNED)

Asako Narahashi
NU.E (SIGNED)

Photographs: Asako Narahashi

Publisher: Sokyu-sha & Mole

126 pages

Year: 1997

ISBN: 4-938628-27-9

Price: 55 €

Comments: Hardcover under illustrated dust jacket, 28,9 x 22,8 cm, b&w photographs. First edition. Signed by Asako Narahashi. In very good condition, other than light folding marks on the dust jacket on top and bottom of the spine.

The nue in Japan is a traditional, mysterious creature. It’s a fictitious animal with a monkey’s head, the body of a racoon, the paws of a tiger and the tail of a snake. Nobody has ever seen it because it’s a figment of the imagination. This is the reason why the word “nue-like” in Japanese is used to talk about someone or something unidentifiable.

In the 90s I made a series of exhibitions whose title was NU-E.

On 17 different occasions, I have presented new shots each time. I displayed almost 10 times more shots than the ones contained in my collection of photographs, NU-E. Some people considered my work nue-like, so I decided to carry the concept of this word to its limits. I shot and displayed them before knowing what really nue was. I wanted to see what can’t be seen.

I believe my journey discovering the “nue” is not over yet.

-Asako Naharashi

In 1990 Narahashi opened her own gallery space 03 FOTOS and showed the “NU-E” series in seventeen exhibitions between 1992 and 1997, the results of which were published as a photobook in 1997. “NU-E” is the Japanese term for a legendary, monstrous creature whose head is that of a monkey, whose legs are those of a tiger, and who has a snake’s tail. In other words, it refers to something without a graspable outline, whose form is constantly shifting. It was under this title that the artist tried to capture something of the nature of Japanese society, where developed cities and rural countryside coexist alongside each other, after the myth of economic growth had collapsed.

-Excerpt from Junya Utsumi's article on Asako Naharashi for AWARE

Published in 1997, NU.E is Japanese photographer Asako Narahashi's debut photobook. Born in Tokyo in 1959, she graduated in Fine Arts from Waseda University’s School of Letters, Art, and Science in 1989. In the late 1980s, Narahashi took part in FotoSession workshops by Daido Moriyama. In 1989, she held her first solo exhibition Dawn in Spring. The following year, she opened the gallery 03FOTOS (1990–2001) as a place to present her own work.