Yasuhiro Ohara’s IBIZA is one of those elusive photography books whose very lack of documentation becomes part of its fascination.
Very little is known about this publication. Its date of publication remains undocumented, as does the period in which the photographs were made. There is no clear record of a conventional publisher, print run, or edition history, and the book appears today with an almost ghostlike presence in the photographic book world. Even Ohara’s documented career, including his work for music and culture publications and his later independent ZINE activity, offers no obvious clue as to when IBIZA was produced.
What can be established comes largely from the book itself. Despite its title, the photographs are not confined to Ibiza. The locations listed inside include Formentera, Es Vedrà, Cala Bassa, Cala Conta, Sunset Ashram, San Miguel Beach, Cala d’Hort, PK2, Pula Vida Beach Club & Restaurant, Ses Salinas Beach, Caló des Moro, Cala Nova and S’Illot des Renclí, tracing a route through some of the most recognisable landscapes and coastal locations of the Balearic Islands.
This geographical list is almost the only documentary framework the book provides. There is no explanatory essay or conventional chronology to establish when Ohara travelled to the islands or over what period the photographs were taken. Instead, IBIZA presents itself as an enigmatic visual record of a place, detached from the usual bibliographical information that normally accompanies a photography book.
That absence is particularly intriguing in the context of Ohara’s practice. He has long worked between commissioned photography, music culture and more personal photographic projects, and his first solo exhibition in Tokyo in 2015 also included the sale of ZINEs, placing him within a tradition of independently produced photographic publications.
IBIZA therefore feels less like a conventional commercial photobook than a personal, independently produced object that somehow escaped into circulation. Its scarce surviving references and the absence of reliable information about its production make it an exceptionally difficult book to place bibliographically