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Paper? 150 sheets.

Film? 60 more rolls.

Fixer? 3 packs.

HC-110? One bottle. Enough for now.

The Light colored squarish book shape in the picture is indeed a book. And last night’s impulse purchase. It is the collected work of Shiego Gocho. I will not be able to make it to the exhibition of his work which is up now at the Mitaka City Gallery of Art, so the book is the next best thing. And what a book—! It is what more photo books ought to be like- none of that “one photo printed on two pages” nonsense. Each photo sits comfortably on it’s own page. The printing quality is top notch- not far from the photo book from which I tend to judge all other photo book quality: Winogrand 1964.

Physical aspects aside, the photos themselves are deeply moving. There is this persistant feeling of the photographer’s presence in a lot of his work- normally this is exactly the type of thing that drives me away from most photographs and photographers, but with Gocho it does just the opposite. His color work in particular impressed me the most- He handled all of the elements of a good photograph- moment, time, light, use of the frame- in such a sensitive and sometimes heart breaking manner. Some of the photos are unsettling in their own innocent way, and at times I felt a queazy sense of desperation.

I bought the book at Book 1st in Lumine in Shinjuku. It was nice to find a stunning collection of photographs among all the usual inane toy-camera-fuzzy-sky-shot-from-the-hip photography books that populate the Art sections of Tokyo bookstores. Ugh. If I never see another super trendy and shallow book of neon pink flowers or saturated blue skies again I will be quite content.