Private Scenery by Masahisa Fukase Photo Collection

About the productJapanese

This is the final destination of the perspective that Masahisa Fukase pursued throughout his life.

The "Private Scenes" series is considered the culmination of Masahisa Fukase's career as an artist. This book is based on the prints that were exhibited twice. In the 1990 photo exhibition "Private Scenes - Travel Notes," part of Fukase's own body appears in photographs taken during his trip to Europe and India the previous year.

"Of course I am the subject of the photo, but the way I am photographed from the background is interesting, so sometimes I feel it would be better if my face wasn't there. I know that, but I can't stop." (Frontispiece Notebook: Private Scenes '92)
The photographs, taken with the camera held in one hand and pointed at himself, also objectify Fukase himself as the photographer, and "they could be hands, feet, faces, or sketches of the city, but all of the things captured can be said to be a reflection of myself" (Frontispiece Note: "Private Scenes - Travel Letters"), hence the name "Private Scenes."

The works included in the exhibition "Private Scenes '92" held in 1992 were silver-halide prints painted with watercolors. Born into a family that ran a photography studio, Fukase's perspective as a photographer is utilized, and his works also feature intense brushstrokes that seem to transcend the boundaries of photography.
"Private Views" combines and develops the perspectives that Fukase pursued throughout his life, such as the relationship between the viewer and the viewed object, and his interest in surrealism. This book can be said to be the final point of Fukase's career as an artist, which came to a halt with the publication of "Private Views '92."

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"Fukase has taken many photographs that can be understood as indistinguishable between subject and object, taking pictures of familiar figures such as his own family, wife, and even his pet cat. In other words, he places himself in the "iris" of the eye and gazes at the subject with the "white of the eye," attempting to superimpose the presence of both in a single photograph, but here, a reversal occurs in which Fukase's position is swapped from the "iris" to the "white of the eye." In his lifetime, he wrote about his relationship with cats and photography, "Cats are an entity that have followed me like a shadow for the last 40 years of my life. Like a shadow -- is this really photographic?" But in "Private Scene," it is as if Fukase himself is the shadow that follows the photograph. "

Text included in this book: "Private Scenes - Preface"
Excerpt from Tomo Kosuga (Director of the Masahisa Fukase Archives)

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"When I think about it, Fukase has always been an artist who expressed his discomfort with the world in such an exaggerated way. It could be the discomfort he felt when he turned his back on his family of photographers with a pioneering history, left home, and tried to become an "artist" in Tokyo after receiving a modern education in photography. It could also be the discomfort he felt between the family he was born into and the family he acquired when he tried to return to his individuality amid the contemporary movement. And in the end, he desperately offers himself as a foreign object to photography. It was probably a performance in which he slammed himself, who had lived with photography, or more specifically, only with photography, against photography as a foreign object. And as a result, the landscape in which he came to embrace a foreign object that he could never come to terms with was perhaps Fukase's work "Private Landscape."

Text included in this book: "The 'I' who intervenes in the landscape - Masahisa Fukase's 'Private Landscape'"
Excerpt from Masako Toda (photo historian)



Private Scenes
Masahisa Fukase

"The "Private Scenes" series by Masahisa Fukase is positioned as the culmination of his work. This book is composed based on the original prints that were exhibiting twice in 1990 and 1992, during the last period of Fukase's lifetime.

The photos taken by Fukase himself while gripping the camera with one hand objectify Fukase as the photographer. "What's photographed might be hands, feet, faces, or city sketches etc, but everything depicted can be seen as a reflection of myself." This is why they are titled "Private Scenes".

In the works included in "Private Scenes '92," , silver gelatin prints are colored with watercolor paints. We can see Fukase's perspective as a photographer, born into a family running a photography studio, and there also is an intense brushwork that deviates from the frame of photography. Furthermore, this shows derailment from the contemporaneous "Private Scenes" in Japan.

Combining "the relationship between the viewer and the viewed"," an interest in surrealism", and" the perspectives Fukase pursued throughout his life", this book truly represents the final destination for Fukase, whose artistic endeavors came to an end after the exhibition "Private Scenes '92".

Product Information

release date Available now

Part numberGPHT11666J-9784865411676

Specification Hardcover / 192p / H190mm x W240mm

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