Kitajima, Keizo, Kuraishi, Shino

Keizo Kitajima: the Joy of Portraits, Limited Edition [Signed]

      Rat Hole Gallery / Nobuhiko Kitamura, 2009. New First edition, first printing. Limited edition of 1500 unnumbered copies, this copy additionally signed in pencil on the front free end-paper by Kitajima. Hardcover. Two cloth covered volumes, with title stamped in black on the front covers and spines, contained in a gray cloth covered slipcase with a four-color plate (1 3/4 x 2 1/4 inches) tipped in the side of the slipcase (also with the title stamped in black on the front and side). Photographs by Keizo Kitajima. Text (in Japanese and English) by Shino Kuraishi. 874 total pp. Volume 1 ("Portraits 1992-") is 160 pp, with four-color plates throughout, covering Kitajima's ongoing series of color studio portraits. Volume 2 ("Koza 1975-1980; Tokyo 1979; New York 1981-1982; Eastern Europe 1983-1984; Berlin, New York, Seoul, Beijing 1986-1990p U.S.S.R. 1991") is 714 pp. with four-color and black-and-white plates throughout. 11-1/4 x 8-5/8 inches. CONDITION: New in publisher's packaging (opened only for signing). From the publisher: "In 1976 Keizo Kitajima made his impressive debut with photographs capturing Koza in Okinawa, a town near the US military base, in the period just after the end of the Vietnam War. Subsequently, he expanded his purview to include Tokyo, New York and Eastern Europe. While the photographs he made during those periods still strike us with their dazzling quality, Kitajima drastically changed his method of photographing after he visited the Soviet Union in 1991, as that nation was on the verge of collapsing; that is, Kitajima changed his place of work from the street to the studio, and in doing so, he denied the aesthetics of 'selection' and 'instantaneity' that is typical of street snapshot photography. In his still ongoing series Portraits, using a view camera instead of a hand-held camera, Kitajima repeatedly photographs the same models at certain intervals, following self-imposed conditions and rules. So far, he has photographed more than three hundred people, with the total number of his phot