shashasha

“Issei Suda - My Japan” is published to accompany the same-titled exhibition at FOMU Antwerpen (May 7 – October 3, 2021) and brings together photographs from Suda’s most iconic series as well rarely seen images from his early days with the avant-garde theater group Tenjo Sajiki.

Like no one else, Suda (1940-2019) was able to use photography to transform reality into something surreal and stage-like, and to capture the extraordinary within everyday scenes. Following the course of this book, the reader follows the trajectory of Suda’s work through many of his most famous photographs from series such as “Fushi Kaden”, “The Mechanical Retina On My Fingertips”, “Waga Tokyo 100”, “The Journey to Osorezan” or “Anonymous Man and Woman”. The rear of the book includes short texts about each of the included series as well as a long interview between Issei Suda and Frits Gierstberg (co-curator of the exhibition), conducted in 2017 and 2018.

“In the course of nearly sixty years, Suda built up an idiosyncratic oeuvre of often surreal images. He developed a coherent visual language all of his own, characterized by square formats and high-contrast black-and-white prints. Through his lens, everyday life took on a magical quality.”
— from the publisher’s description