Photographer
Kitajima Keizo

Description
First edition. In 1979 Kitajima co-founded the Image Shop Camp Gallery in Shinjuku with Seiji Kurata and Daido Moriyama. He made these photographs during a series of trips made between 1983 and 1990 in a number of Eastern and Western cities, including Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Budapest, Warsaw, and Prague.

In A.D.1991 he presents close-up colour and black-and-white street portraits of passersby, interspersed with a series of unpopulated urban landscapes showing modern buildings in commercial districts. Together they form a disquieting portrait of the separation of the inhabitants from the urban environment in the modern metropolis. In his essay Yasuo Kobayashi refers to the book as "a kind of album of anguish". Not because each one of these photos captures anguish as such. It is true that the lonely, contorted expressions on these faces reminded me immediately of Baudelaire's The Swan. But the overwhelming impression of anguish comes above all from the painful rift apparent between the two series, city and faces. There is a violence here Baudelaire could hardly have known.

"Kitajima alights on two facets of the modern city- the anonymous International Style architecture of the city's commercial quarter and the distracted expressions of its citizens as they travel the hectic, crowded streets. By cutting between long views of the urban topography, taken when devoid of people and traffic, and close-ups of individuals during busy workdays, he draws a comparison between the stern, calm anonymity of the corporate architecture and the anxious denizens scurrying in the shadow of the buildings. Kitajima may make an obvious point, but he makes it with verve and elegance, in the manner of a contemporary Yasuhiro Ishimoto."

Parr & Badger, The Photobook: A History

Condition
Vintage in Very Good Condition, ca. 1991, 157pp, text in Japanese and English, original printed obi band in orange.

Measurements
W 30.5 x H 27 CM