Masahisa Fukase Private Scenes

Published for the first time in book form, this startling and intimate collection of late images by the great twentieth-century photographer comprises the series Private Scenes and Letters from Journeys.

One of the most important Japanese photographers of the last century, Masahisa Fukase was known for exploring themes of isolation, loneliness and melancholy and for his transgressive and intimate approach to the medium.

This volume includes two of his last and arguably most personal series. Private Scenes features photographs taken over the course of the year 1989 in different locations around the world and in which he is both subject and photographer. He then painted over the prints with colored washes to create an entirely new piece. For this same series, he later photographed scenes from daily life, this time in Tokyo, changing camera and adding the date on his photographs, but still representing himself in the images.

This book reproduces for the first time in book form all of the photographs that make up both original series. It charts a turning point in Fukase’s work—an artist grappling with his medium and with a compulsion to share his personal experiences with his audience. The photographs are accompanied by a text by Masako Toda, who offers a contextual and historical consideration of Fukase’s œuvre.

MASAKO TODA is a photo historian, author, and curator of Japanese photography. She holds a masters from The University of Tokyo. Toda is a lecturer at Musashino Art University, Tokyo College of Photography, among others. In 2006, she was awarded the incentive award by the Japan Society for Arts and History of Photography. Toda’s field of expertise is the history of modernism as well as postwar Japanese photography.