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About Publisher
Founded in 2015 with a focus on photography and contemporary art, Case Publishing made it its mission to expand the art book into a platform for an even richer variety of art forms. Together with Japanese galleries and international artists, Case Publishing elevates artbooks into a new mode of expression by utilizing the individual strengths of books both as a medium and as objects. In September 2017, Case Publishing opened exhibition spaces in Tokyo and Rotterdam which serve as places of cultural exchange for local communities.
With its own publications, Case Publishing has created and experienced photobooks in all their potential forms: from conventional photobooks-as-catalogues, which reproduce works with minimal intervention; photobooks-as-books, which allow photographers to express their vision without compromise; to photobooks as a form of collective expression, in which artists and specialists from a diversity of fields—designers, printers, writers, etc.—work together to create an encompassing, new form of the book which surpasses individual expression.
Established in 2012, shashasha is an online photobook collection aimed at making Japanese and Asian photography more accessible to a worldwide audience. Created first as an online archive available through the iPad application, shashasha developed to include an online webstore to provide a platform for both independent and established publishers and artists to expand their audience. The core aim of shashasha is to provide a platform to allow and encourage an engagement with Japanese and other Asian photography: an avenue to the rich culture of photography from the Region.
For inquiries contact Nobuhiro Kobayashi, nobuhiro@case-publishing.jp
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Roadside Lights Seasons: Winter
Roadside Lights Seasons: Winter is a follow-up to Eiji Ohashi’s critically acclaimed photographic series of vending machines along roads throughout Japan. The volume focuses exclusively on scenes taken during winter, with volumes for spring, summer and fall to be released as well.
“The vending machines placed all over the country are a symbolic image of today’s Japan, and their lonely, daily work is reminiscent of the modern lives of us humans. In this sense, my series is a conscious reflection of its era, but it is also an expression of my own personal aesthetic sensibilities,” says Ohashi.
With its large format and considerable weight, the photobook Roadside Lights Seasons: Winter gently recalls the weight and size of the vending machines in Ohashi’s photographs. The leporello-style bookbinding allows the book to spread out into an instantaneous mobile exhibition as well.
Publisher: Case Publishing
Artist(s): Eiji Ohashi
Publication Date: 2020
Binding: Hardcover, Leporello, Slipcase
Dimensions: 255 × 365 x 16 mm
Pages: 57
ISBN: 978-4-908526-38-1
Price: 11,000 JPY
TO PURCHASE: shashasha.co/book/roadside-lights-seasons-winter-c
About Author(s)
Born in Wakkanai, Hokkaido in 1955.
Driven by the question what happiness means to us humans, Ohashi began visiting the Himalayas, Tibet, Pakistan and China’s Western Regions in 1984, and documented landscapes of local ethnic minorities over a period of 20 years.
In 2008, Ohashi started to work as a commercial photographer and began photographing vending machines throughout Japan. Eiji Ohashi’s main exhibitions so far include Roadside Lights at Galerie&co199 (Paris, 2017) and Existence Of at Zen Foto Gallery (Tokyo, 2017).
Symphony - Mushrooms From the Forest
Inspired by the Ed Ruscha series Coloured People, Japanese photographer Takashi Homma visited forests on three continents to search for radioactive mushrooms. The mushrooms̶ gathered in Scandinavia, Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Stony Point were photographed in front of a white background, with occasional photographs from the forests and views that Homma encountered during his hunt. The forest is one of earth’s most primal habitats; in the modern age, it is us who maintain and care for the forest.
Publisher: Case Publishing
Artist(s): Takashi Homma
Publication Date: 2019
Binding: Softcover
Dimensions: 328 × 258 × 25 mm
Pages: 296
ISBN: 978-4-908526-34-3
Price: 7,920 JPY
TO PURCHASE: shashasha.co/book/symphony-softcover
About Author(s)
Takashi Homma (b.1962) is a Japanese photographer born and based in Tokyo. He studied photography at Nihon University College of Art, and left in 1984 to take a job as an in-house photographer at a Tokyo advertising agency. In 1991 he moved to London for two years to work as a photographer for i-D Magazine.
Homma’s work examines the nuances of Tokyo’s suburban districts, its urban centre, its surrounding landscapes, and its people. Homma's pictures tell a tender and discreet story of the Tokyo discourse. He observes and documents sterile contemporary architecture, well-groomed highways, hidden rooftop gardens, desolate chain restaurants, quiet car parks, stray teenagers, children at play, objects in a home, snow-capped mountains, and hypnotic seas.
Homma has published several photography books throughout his career. In 1999 he was awarded a Kimura Ihei Commemorative Photography Award for his project, Tokyo Suburbia (1998), his formative work now considered a classic. Homma had his first solo museum exhibition, New Documentary, showing at three museums in Japan from 2011-2012.
He is currently a guest professor at the Tokyo Zokei University Graduate School and resides in Tokyo.
A Hunter
Daido Moriyama’s legendary photobook is now available again with invaluable commentary. A Hunter was published in 1972, as the 10th part of a photobook series called Gendai no Me, and includes some of Daido Moriyama’s most infamous and respected photographs. For the series, inspired by Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, Moriyama̶ drove through Japan by car, took photos wherever his wheels took him, and substantiated his status as one of Japan’s most interesting photographers.
This faithful new edition features the photobook as well as a carefully designed and researched English booklet which includes essays by Tadanori Yokoo and Shoji Yamagashi, and invaluable commentary by Daido Moriyama regarding the book as a whole as well as each individual photograph.
Publisher: Case Publishing
Artist(s): Daido Moriyama
Publication Date: 2019
Binding: Hardcover, Slipcase
Dimensions: 308 × 228 mm
Pages: 112
ISBN: 978-4-80563-084-6
Price: 9,900 JPY
TO PURCHASE: shashasha.co/en/book/a-hunter
About Author(s)
Daido Moriyama (b. 1938 in Osaka) lives and works in Tokyo.
After training in graphic design, he began to work in photography as an assistant to Takeji Iwamiya and Eikoh Hosoe and started his career as a photographer in 1964. His work for magazines like Provoke and his photobooks (Japan: A Photo Theater in 1968 and Farewell Photography in 1972) and his expressive style of ‘Are‑Bure‑Boke’ have had a radical impact on the photography world both in Japan and the rest of the world. He is one of the most influential Japanese photographers.
Moriyama is a recipient of The Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography (2019) and the Lifetime Achievement award at the 28th Annual Infinity Awards from International Center of Photography, New York (2012).
Shanghai
In his photobook Shanghai, Japanese photographer Hiroyuki Nakada presents photography taken on the streets of the Chinese megacity. Nakada, who moved from Japan to China in 1999, and his sensibilities are neither “in” nor “out;” his photographs—many of them focusing on faces—reveal the curiosity of an outsider and the knowledge of an insider.
Speaking about this particular work, Nakada says: “I point the camera at my subjects without warning. My subjects are neither models nor actors, just ordinary citizens. I can’t help but feel excited seeing the horror somewhere in the depths of expressions on people’s faces in everyday life. Seeing them fulfills me. That is why I still devour them even today, like a hyena that has found its prey.”
Publisher: Case Publishing
Artist(s): Hiroyuki Nakada
Publication Date: 2020
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 200 × 200 mm
Pages: 132
ISBN: 978-4-905453-93-2
Price: 4,500 JPY
TO PURCHASE: shashasha.co/book/shanghai-2
About Author(s)
Born in Kanagawa prefecture in 1960, Nakada moved to Shanghai in 1999 and has been photographing people on the streets of Shanghai since 2008. In 2016, he exhibited Shanghai at Place M, and continued his exhibitions Passerby A (2017), Five Eyes (2018), and Four Limbs and Five Organs (2019) at the same venue.
Nakada is also actively participating in exhibitions and photo festivals overseas. In 2018 he held his exhibition Five Eyes at Machine House Brewery in Seattle, USA and participated in Shanghai International Photo Festival, China Naiman Camel Bell on Silk Road International Photo Festival, and Yixian International Photo Festival in the same year.
Ash (New Edition)
Based on Lao Tze’s Theory of Nature, Muge’s series approaches objects, sceneries, and places from the perspective not of an intruder or observer but as an insider, as someone who belongs, giving his subjects the necessary space to weather, grow, decay, and simply exist. Divided into three parts—Still Life, Shan Shui, and Scenery—Muge’s images draw on symbolism and metaphor to create larger connections between the pages of the book. The three parts of the book are stacked on top of each other, forming a staircase-like design, with each photo printed in black and gray and finished with "glossy varnish, matte varnish or special color varnish, depending on the delicate state of each object.”
Speaking about this particular work, Muge says: “When I used the large format camera to re-understand my hometown as it is now, I’vediscovered that all things in the real world derive from our internal desire: the Karma cycle of yearning for nature, destroying nature, and mending nature [...] These images are taken from the understandings gleaned from my daily life, conveying the traces of time and history in nature, and a person’s thoughts of the future when faced with reality.”
Publisher: Case Publishing
Artist(s): Muge
Publication Date: 2019
Binding: Softcover with folded cover
Dimensions: 273 × 217 mm
Pages: 132
ISBN: N/A
Price: 5,800 JPY
TO PURCHASE: shashasha.co/en/book/ash-new-edition
About Author(s)
Born in Chongqing in 1979, Muge currently lives in Chengdu, China. He is the founder of Muge Gallery. Muge received the Photographer of the Year Award from American photography magazine PND in 2013 and was selected as one of the most notable photographers born in the 1970s and 1980s by IMA Magazine, Japan. His works have been exhibited both domestically and internationally, including his solo exhibition Behind the Wall at Format Photo Festival in 2019; 40 Years of Chinese Contemporary Photography at OACT Contemporary Art Terminal Shenzhen in 2018 and Three Shadows Photography Art Centre Beijing in 2017; Chinese Contemporary Photography at Kunstraum Villa Friede in Germany in 2015; The Rising of Dragon: Contemporary Chinese Photography at Katonah Museum of New York in 2012. His main publications include Ash (Zen Foto Gallery, Japan, 2013 for the first edition, 2019 for the new edition) and Going Home (Jiazazhi, 2014. China).
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