_valerian

Last night, on a tip from the author, I at last was able to find a photo book that I had been after for a long time. Mitsugu Onishi’s “Wonderland 1980-1989” is an incredible collection of photographs of Tokyo in the 1980s. Shot with a square format camera at all sorts of cultural events and in and around east Tokyo, he has made work that is both everything about photography and Japan, but without any of the cliches or sentimentalism that is found in so much “Japan Photography”. You can see some selected images from the series on his website, in GALLERY 1.
I found his book at Genkido, a first rate shop of fine art and photography books. They have an intelligent and classy selection of books- Not only did I go home with Wonderland, but also with a signed Araki book (2000 yen, which was 200 yen cheaper than if I had bought it new), and Looking at Photographs by John Szarkowski for 1800 yen. I was tempted by the Japanese edition of Robert Frank’s The Americans for it’s translation of Kerouac’s forward, and probably gasped too loud ( I had my music on at the time) when I saw an original edition of Hiromi Tsuchida’s masterpiece, Zokushin, and maybe I gasped even louder at seeing the price of 20,000 yen…

I have said it before, Onishi Mitsugu is the sharpest photographer working in Japan today. And not because I know him, it’s because his work is always right on. It has everything to do with Japan, but at the same time the photos themselves do not depend on their being images taken in his homeland. The are first and foremost excellent photographs, with the rest of the details following along, interwined with the time and places that they were taken. You can see some of his work on his site, with some amazing new images in the New Gallery section. While the photographs are top notch, they tend to be hidden behind a bit too much flash programming. Regardless, take a look.