Kishin Shinoyama - Paris - 1977

WONDERFUL, SOUGHT-AFTER COLOR PHOTOBOOK ABOUT PARIS -
by Kishin Shinoyama (1940-2024), one of the leading photographers from Japan, well known for his nudes photos, less known for this brilliant book about the capital of France.

Honoured here:
Hans-Michael Koetzle, "Eyes on Paris. Paris im Fotobuch. 1890 bis heute" ("Paris in
Photobooks. 1890 until today"), pages 354 and 357

COMPLETE WITH THE SLIPCASE - EXCELLENT, FRESH CONDITION.

COMPLETE WITH THE BOOKLET (loosely laid in, with the paris map where you can see where the photos were made and with all photos from inside in mini-format printed).

COMPLETE WITH THE ORIGINAL BELLYBAND (OBI).

Welcome to the LAST PHOTOBOOK AUCTION by 5Uhr30.com starting this year -
with more than 100 great lots from my personal collection and from recent acquisitions.
Like always we guarantee detailed and accurate descriptions, 100% transport protection, 100% transport insurance and of course combined shipping - worldwide.

Shinchosha, Tokyo. 1977. First edition, first printing.

Hardcover in red leatherette in red slipcase, with booklet and with obi. 260 x 345 mm. 150 pages. 133 illustrations. Photos: Kishin Shinoyama. Text in Japanese.

Condition:
Book inside and outside and slipcase in fresh and flawless condition, clean with no marks and with no foxing; pages smell a bit (which is with this title often the case). Booklet fresh inside, outside with some light foxing. Bellyband complete with no missing part; a small and a longer tear, little trace of use. Overall very fine condition.

Fantastic color photobook about Paris by Kishin Shinoyama -
complete with book, booklet, slipcase and bellyband.

We THANK YOU SO MUCH to make our single-seller photobook auctions on Catawiki so successful.
Ecki Heuser & team are wishing ALL THE BEST TO YOU AND YOURS for 2025.

"After Shinzo Fukuhara and Ihei Kimura, Kishin Shinoyama is the third Japanese photographer to donate a book to Paris. Published in Tokyo in 1977, the book, which is clad in brown leatherette (which takes some getting used to) leatherette, however, is still clearly overshadowed by his other titles, which generally revolve around the themes of nudes and eroticism. The book is rarely mentioned and usually overlooked in bibliographies. Even the most recent, large monograph on Kishin Shinoyama', which includes a serious appendix, fails to mention it: a footnote - one might think - in the life of the artist, who was born in Tokyo in 1940 and who, from the late 1960s onwards, caused an international stir with his comparatively revealing nudes.
As a ‘master of erotic photography’, Shinoyama - incidentally the son of a Buddhist monk - quickly became ‘a kind of darling of the media’ and, over the years, ‘one of Japan's leading photographers’, as well as someone who ‘made Japanese photography known worldwide’, even if his fame seems to be fading somewhat in the face of the global presence of names such as Nobuyoshi Araki or Daido Moriyama. As early as 1970, the Japanese Photographers' Association voted him ‘Photographer of the Year’. A short time later, he - together with Sam Haskins, David Hamilton and Francis Giacobetti - made a memorable appearance at the 'Photokina' trade fair in Cologne when ‘the trade fair organisers chose
had seven nude motifs by Haskins and Shinoyama, as well as the title, removed or pasted over because, in the opinion of the fair management, they were ‘extremely lesbian depictions’ and ‘depictions of an extraordinarily repulsive message’.
Shinoyama once again caused a sensation in 1974 when his zvklus on the traditional Japanese art of tattooing reached the public. Of his numerous books, collectors and critics today particularly appreciate ‘Hareta Hi’ (‘A Fine Day’), published in Tokyo in 1975 and, according to Gerry Badger ‘not only an early conceptual exercise by a Japanese photographer, but also one executed completely in colour. ‘
Shinoyama also relied entirely on colour as a means of expression in his 1977 volume on Paris. He was not necessarily breaking new ground here. Kimura and the German Peter Cornelius in particular had already seen Paris in colour and published corresponding books. However, the way in which Shinoyama refuses the panorama, bypassing the large, monumental, familiar Paris in order to concentrate entirely on the patina of the courtyards, alleyways and quiet corners, is certainly breaking new ground. Anyone who has learned to see Paris primarily as a silvery-grey sea of houses, into which at best traffic lights, the green of trees or billboards mingle as serious colour nuances, will be proven wrong by the artist. The message is that Paris offers a rich palette of colour nuances that are not necessarily garish, but certainly strong and finely tuned, especially when viewed close up and in the right light.
In a way, Shinoyama is following in the footsteps of Atget. The Japanese artist also seeks and finds Paris where it is old, narrow, poor, run-down - and surreally deserted. Rather exceptionally, he brings passers-by, deliverymen, caretakers and children into the picture. Circus performers appear at one point at the back of the book. For the rest, Paris is left to itself, its colours and its light. Shinoyama, it is said, is a ‘master of modelling with light’. It is precisely this talent that he exploits in a special way in ‘Paris’. Again and again, he discovers bright spots in backyards, on the street, on the walls of houses, the punctual light of an early or late day. Street signs regularly appear, familiar names such as ‘Impasse du Tertre’ or ‘Rue Montorgueil’, which refer to Paris, a city that one believes to remember in a completely different way: more stately, more powerful, more representative. Shinoyama points to the dilapidated side of a metropolis in which a patina of the pre-war era has obviously been able to survive for a long time - at least in the niches.
It is this patina, with its appearance sometimes reminiscent of the art of collage, décollage and Art Informel, that interests Shinoyama. Added to this is an obsession with photographic detail, which makes his interiors, stairwells with lavatories and backyards into veritable treasure troves for later anthropologists. Ultimately, Shinoyama's book is at least as much a book about Paris as it is about the use of colour as a means of expression, which is seen very consciously and translated into photographic images. A brilliant print supports the idea. The colours seem to smack, lights and shadows to bow before Rembrandt. The conceptual nature of the book is emphasised by the way in which the motifs are placed on the pages without borders or distracting captions. This makes Shinoyama's book one of the most interesting of the 1970s and is certainly ahead of its time in its commitment to the creative use of colour."
(Hans-Michael Koetzle)