Perimeter's curated Reading Capsules aim to explore some of the store's key points of interest and enquiry. Each capsule, focusing on various themes, mediums and contexts in art and design publishing, features titles available for individual purchase or as a specially priced bundle.
Our second capsule comes from the incredible Case Publishing (Tokyo) and Zen Foto Gallery (Tokyo). These niche and highly specialised publishers are both known for their distinct appreciation for aesthetics and detail in design, and work with a remarkably high calibre of contemporary photographers and artists.
Due to the limited availability of the selected titles, at this time we have one bundle available, specially priced at $399 with free domestic shipping.
Takehiko Nakafuji – White Noise
Takehiko Nakafuji began shooting the photographs for White Noise after seeing the nuclear plant in Fukushima explode on March 11, 2011.
Nakafuji’s exciting photographs of Tokyo mix genres and styles; black-and-white street photography is as much part of the series as almost psychedelically colourful architectural shots. Special attention should be paid to the book’s brilliant multi-layered design, where behind the photographs on each page lurks another hidden scene, ready to be uncovered. This is the closest any photobook has ever come to mirror the experience of Tokyo itself, with its endlessly labyrinthian structures and visual opulence.
244 pages, 23 x 18 cm, softcover, Zen Foto Gallery (Tokyo).
HIGH FASHION is a series of work taken of drunk salarymen sleeping in the streets of Tokyo. Pawel Jaszczuk, residing in Japan at the time, would head out on his bicycle after midnight to photograph different people and places, saying that the best hours for him to shoot would be between 1 am and 4 am. For this book, Pawel has selected images of sleeping salarymen in poses reminiscent of fashion models and the photobook is in the style of a glossy magazine.
According to Pawel, this body of work is emphatically not a statement against drinking. Rather, he originally wanted to capture the simple contrast between men in nice suits and dirty streets, but his view of the work has evolved in recent years. This time Pawel hopes that HIGH FASHION acts as a humorous, apocalyptic vision of this overworked and overstressed society.
120 pages, 31.3 x 23.4 cm, softcover, Zen Foto Gallery (Tokyo).
Takashi Homma – Symphony: Mushrooms from the Forest
Inspired by the Ed Ruscha series Coloured People, Japanese photographer Takashi Homma’s visited forests on three continents to search for radioactive mushrooms. The mushrooms—gathered in Scandinavia, Fukushima, Chernobyl and Stony Point—were photographed in front of a white background, with occasional photographs from the forests and views that Homma encountered during his hunt. The forest is one of earth’s most primal habitats; in the modern age, it is us who maintain and care for the forest.
296 pages, 33.5 x 26.5 cm, hardcover, Case Publishing (Tokyo).
Takuma Nakahira is one of the most legendary photographers of post-war Japan and a life-long rival of Daido Moriyama. Overflow is the first photobook in which his installation work comes alive in entirety and detail since its unveiling in 1974.The photographs show elements of a city — eery rifts in a space overflowing with objects, commodities and information — that Nakahira encountered and captured in his everyday life, from ivy creeping across walls and manhole covers in the streets to the tire of a large truck, from a pale-bellied shark floating in the transparent darkness behind the glass of an aquarium to close-up shots of a subway station.
64 pages, 36.4 x 25.7 cm, softcover, Case Publishing (Tokyo).