20

by Kikuji Kawada

At 87 years of age, Japanese photographer Kikuji Kawada shows no signs of slowing down. Founding member of the influential VIVO group and internationally renowned for his photographic oeuvre, Kawada’s latest photobook “20” is composed of images originally uploaded by Kawada to his instagram page between 2019 and 2020.

“...[I]n this tapestry of thirty images, there is neither a prevailing atmosphere of beginning, nor a whiff of the impending end. There is no rhythmic intensity nor diminuendo, no rhyming motifs of color and shape. Instead, images propagate like fungi, cross pollinating while mutating. Occasionally images occur like echoes across dimensions of time and space; other times they cause scrolling shadows to appear. And visions freely crawl the ground, or remain floating in the air, where the mirage of an invisible city flickers.

In 2020, in the midst of a plague, wandering visions may seem a grotesque allegory. Yet the story they weave is far from new. Making their own sounds, they progress through the abyss of the imagination. I’m aware that at any moment they could lose speed.

[...]

I want to continue. As now the sky is still bright and the shadow before me has not yet faded.” — from the artist’s statement

The title of his latest photobook “20” was a suggestion by book designer Hikari Machiguchi and editor Yohei Kawada, whom Kawada met through his Instagram account in 2020.

32 pages, Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 2021

About the author

Kikuji Kawada (川田 喜久治 Kawada Kikuji, born 1933) is a Japanese photographer. He co-founded the Vivo photographic collective in 1959 with Akira Sato, Eikoh Hosoe, Ikko Narahara, Akira Tanno and Shomei Tomatsu. He was one of the fifteen artists selected for the “New Japanese Photography” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1974. He was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Photographic Society of Japan in 2011.

(from Wikipedia)