FAMILY by FUKASE MASAHISA Family Photo Collection by Masahisa Fukase

About the productJapanese

Masahisa Fukase, one of Japan's leading photographers of the 1970s, was born in Bifuka town in northern Hokkaido in 1934. His family had run a photo studio for three generations.

In August 1971, Fukase and his wife Yoko visited their hometown for the first time in over a decade and reunited with their now large family, which now included a younger brother and sister. They decided to take a commemorative family photo at a photo studio. However, they forced Fukase's wife to wear only a loincloth and threw her half-naked among the family, and began taking a strange family photo.

This series, which satirizes traditional styles of family photography and which Fukase himself declared to be "a parody of myself, a fallen third generation family member," was interrupted at one point but continued until 1989, when Fukase Photo Studio went out of business.

This book is a new edition of the photo book "Family" published by Inter Press Corporation in 1991. Family portraits taken at the Fukase Photo Studio are arranged in chronological order, and at the end of the book you will find Fukase's autobiography, which was included in the original edition, and a commentary on the work by Tomo Kosuga, founder and director of the Masahisa Fukase Archives.

"My entire family, whose image I see inverted in the frosted glass, will die one day. This camera, which reflects and freezes their images, is actually a device for archiving death". ? Masahisa Fukase

For three generations the Fukase family ran a photography studio in Bifuka, a small provincial town in the northern Japanese province of Hokkaido. In August 1971, at the age of 35, Masahisa Fukase returned home from Tokyo, where he had moved in the 1950s. He realized that the Fukase Photographic Studio, which his younger brother managed, combined with the growing family members, constituted the perfect subject for a series of portraits. Between 1971 and 1989, he returned regularly and used the family studio, the large-format Anthony view camera and the changing family line-up as the basis for the series. True to his style, Fukase often introduced third-party models and humorous elements to juxtapose the ineluctable reality of time passing and the dwindling family group. He continued the series through his father's death in 1987, up until the closure of the Fukase studio due to bankruptcy in 1989, and the consequential dispersion of the family.

Family (Kazoku) was released in 1991, and was Fukase's last book. It begins with a photograph of the family studio and the following 31 images are family portraits made in the studio in chronological order. The book includes an extensive text written by Fukase himself and a modern essay by Tomo Kosuga.


Hardback bound in black buckram, embossed in red foil
31 x 23 cm, 80 pages

Product Information

release date 2019年

Part numberGPHT10668J-9781912339778

Specification Hardcover / W230×H310mm / Monochrome / 96 pages

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