MACK, 2021
Kikuji Kawada, Joshua Chuang, Miyuki Hinton
Hardcover w/ slipcase, 272 pages
7.76 x 11.77 inches
Signed.

Designed to recreate the original two volume “Chizu” (or The Map as it has come to be known in English) hand made by the photographer with his prints, this publication shows and tells (in a third volume) how the book came to be the ultimate icon of The 20th Century Japanese Photo-Book.

From MACK:

Kawada’s The Map / Chizu is the most famous and sought after book in the history of Japanese photography. Designed with the noted graphic designer Kohei Sugiura, Chizu has seen numerous editions since its original publication in August 1965. In November 2001, New York Public Library acquired the rarest version of the book, Kikuji Kawada’s unique, handmade maquette. The maquette presents a notably different physicality than that of the published edition—many of the pictures are the same but with variant croppings, tonalities, orientations, and a markedly dissimilar configuration with a pair of jacketed volumes—each nearly twice as large in format as the published version—separated by a black-and-white divider. With its pages made of thin, silvery darkroom prints, folded in half and pasted back-to-back, there are no folios to unfurl, only a progression of intense, full-bleed images. This MACK version is an exquisite facsimile of the two-volume maquette, and includes an accompanying bilingual booklet featuring new scholarship by Joshua Chuang and Miyuki Hinton, together with an extended interview with the artist, detailing the evolution of one of the greatest photobooks ever made.
ENGLISH/JAPANESE- Text by Joshua Chuang and Miyuki Hinton

“This new edition by MACK is … a thing of dark beauty in itself.” – The Best Art and Architecture of Autumn 2021, The Guardian

A must have for all photo-book geeks, lovers of Japanese photography and book design, and Kawada fans.