Thursday, October 24, 2013

Childlens, edited by Action Punch.

Childlens, edited by Action Punch.  Hardcover book with pictorial boards (no dust jacket) published by Action Punch/Little More 2003, unpaginated with colour photographs as well as some black and white photographs (of the photographers)(Small amount of text only.  This is in Japanese).


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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