I recently sang the praises of hard boiled vintage photographer,
Weegee. This book is at the complete other end of the spectrum re interesting/of interest photography books. The small amount of
text is in Japanese, but that’s not really important as it is a collection of
photographs and the photos really do speak for themselves. My skills of detection lead me to believe
that the book was published to accompany an exhibition of photos in 2003
somewhere in Japan… at least that’s what the promotional sticker on the front
cover written in Japanese and English indicates. The title gives a little more information as
to who took the photos and the subject matter of many of the photos leaves
little doubt that they were taken by young children. There’s also a section at the back of the
book where there are many small black and white photographs of the
photographers.
I am a bit of cynic at times and the idea of an exhibition
of childrens photography is something that horrifies this bookseller… Sorry if
this offends any parents of young “gifted” photographers, but it’s true, I
couldn’t think of anything worse than looking at out of focus poorly executed photographs. If I wanted to see that sort of thing, I
would take more photos. So, I nearly
didn’t pick up this book until I had a good long hard look at it. Wow...
it’s beautiful, a true surprise… and revelation. I am so impressed with this book that I’ve
even written about it here. Here’s a few
scans of some of the images. (Some of
the edges are a little blurry and have been trimmed due to the scanning
process.)
Besides the parents of the kids involved, I don’t know that
many people would be interested in this book… except for me… and if I like
it, and I’m not related to any of the photographers, there may be others.
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