This book brings together, for the first time, the complete Private Scenes photographic series, revealing a new dimension of Masahisa Fukase’s work: that of an artist struggling with his medium. This unique body of work consists of images in which the artist inserts himself. The series is divided into two bodies of work: Letters from Journeys, featuring photographs taken in 1989 in different cities around the world, including Paris, London, Brussels and Antwerp, and Private Scenes ’92, which focuses on his everyday life in Tokyo, where each print is now enhanced with painted colour, transforming it into a unique work.
The latter series bears witness to Fukase’s questioning of his own photographic practice towards the end of his life, and of the photographer’s place within his work, as subject and object overlap, also evoking the contemporary practice of the selfie. Tomo Kosuga, director of the Masahisa Fukase Archives, and Masako Toda, a historian of Japanese photography, explore this body of work through two essays.