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Ametsuchi (signed)

by Rinko Kawauchi

Photographs: Rinko Kawauchi

Publisher: Kehrer Verlag

80 pages

Pictures: 40 colour illustrations

Year: 2013

ISBN: 78-3-86828-396-9

Comments: Hardcover with Japanese binding; 24 x 34cm; Deutscher Fotobuchpreis 2014 (konzeptionell-künstlerische Fotobände)

The title of Rinko Kawauchi’s latest work, Ametsuchi, is comprised of two Japanese characters meaning »heaven and earth,« and is taken from the title of one of the oldest pangrams in Japanese – a chant in which each character of the Japanese syllabary is used. Translated loosely as »Song of the Universe,« it offers a list that includes the heavens, earth, stars, and mountains. In the series Kawauchi brings together images of distant constellations and tiny figures lost within landscapes, as well as photographs of a traditional style of controlled-burn farming (yakihata) in which the cycles of cultivation and recovery span decades and generations. The book is designed by award-winning Dutch designer Hans Gremmen, who brings a sense of the monumental and the mysterious to the design with a seductive origami binding. The series is Kawauchi’s first to be fully realized with a medium-format, 4 x 5 camera, instead of the 2-1/4-inch format for which she has become best known. Rinko Kawauchi (b. 1972 in Shiga, Japan) has had solo exhibitions at Fondation Cartier, Paris; Photographers’ Gallery, London; and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; among other venues. She was shortlisted for the 2012 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. She lives and works in Tokyo.

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