A special report from Monsters & Madonnas, in keeping with DART's August special, Focus on Photobooks:

Japanese Photobooks from the ICP Library

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Russet Lederman

Summer in New York – crowded with tourists and almost as hot as Tokyo! A refuge is needed and the ICP Library provides the antidote: a calm air-conditioned space where photobooks can be explored at one’s leisure.

As the 10×10 Photobooks team nears completion on the forthcoming 10×10 Japanese Photobooks publication, the editors (myself among them) have been spending a fair amount of time in the ICP Library’s air-conditioned bliss, where the 100 books that form the foundation for the project’s traveling reading room are housed. 

Yoshihiro Hagiwara, Snowy. Tokyo: Tosei-sha, 2008. TR656 .H346 2008

Fact checking and color matching might sound boring, but not when it involves the diverse collection of books that will be showcased in this inventively designed catalogue by Sybren Kuiper (SYB), with lithography and technical supervision by Colour & Books [Netherlands]

Daido Moriyama, ’71-NY. New York: PPP Editions in association with Roth Horowitz LLC, 2002. TR647 .M67 2002

The publication presents a distinctive overview of Japanese photobooks from 1954 to the present conceived around 20 highlighted books elegantly displayed across double-page and Japanese-bound spreads, supplemented by a visual appendix that includes all 200 books in both the reading room and online spaces.

Takuma Nakahira, Sakyureshon: Hizuke, Basho, Koi / Circulation: Date, Place, Events. Tokyo: Osiris, 2012. TR659.8 .N352 2012

In tandem with the publication’s release on 18 September 2014 at the Unseen Photo Fair in Amsterdam, the 10×10 Japanese Photobooks Reading Room will be restaged in the fair’s Living Room space. What follows is a discussion of several of the 10×10 Japanese highlighted books that will be on view from 18-21 September at Unseen in Amsterdam and included in the publication. The books are presented with abbreviated commentaries from the 10×10 specialists who selected them.[photography by Mathieu Asselin]  [See the books in detail here]

Russet Lederman is a media artist, researcher, and Japanese photobookcollector who lives in New York City. She has taught media art theory and practice at Pratt Institute, Parsons The New School for Design and is currently a faculty member in the MFA Art Criticism & Writing program and MFA Computer Art department at the School of Visual Arts, New York City. Lederman has received awards and grants from Prix Ars Electronica and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.