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‘My entire family, whose image I see inverted in the frosted glass, will die one day. This camera, which reflects and freezes their images, is actually a device for archiving death’.

“Family,” the last photobook published by Masahisa Fukase before his accident in 1992, will be republished in a new edition in September.

Fukase began taking portraits of his family in 1971 in the family-owned photography studio in Bifuku in Hokkaido. The series continued until 1989, until the studio closed due to bankruptcy.
In true Fukase-style he subverted the family portraits by including unrelated models, pulling faces, letting his family pose nude and using other humorous devices. The series includes 32 images, all taken on the large-format family-owned Anthony view camera, and documents the Fukase family aging, growing, losing members. The book also includes an autobiography written by Fukase himself.