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One Picture Book #99: Face (book + print)

by Tomoko Sawada

Photographs: Tomoko Sawada

Publisher: Nazraeli Press

16 pages

Pictures: 12 four-color plates

Year: July 2017

ISBN: 978-1-59005-473-4

Price: 89 44.50 €

Comments: Hardcover, 5 1/2 x 7 1/4, 1 signed original photograph by Tomoko Sawada

One of the most recognizable artists of her generation, Tomoko Sawada is a Japanese contemporary feminist photographer and performance artist. For this contribution to our One Picture Book series, Sawada presents twelve self-portraits, each one showing her made up as a different ethnicity and cultural background.

As playful as it appears to be, Sawada’s work has a very serious underlying message. In her own words, “All people—despite having different types of so-called “added values” such as nationality, race, religion, and language—are essentially and naturally equal human beings. This fundamental underlies my photographic work: I aim to point people euphemistically to the fact that humans share 99.99999% of the same genes.”

Each copy of Face book includes a randomly-selected original signed print of one of the 12 images in the book.

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