Published in 1972 by Shashin Hyoron-sha, I Am a King brings together photographs taken by Shomei Tomatsu at different points in his career. Rather than presenting a single project, the book combines images from different contexts to create a personal sequence exploring postwar Japan and the profound social and cultural transformations the country was undergoing.
Faces, bodies, streets, interiors and everyday objects are photographed with Tomatsu's characteristic closeness. He crops figures, moves in on small details and uses strong contrasts to transform recognisable scenes into more ambiguous images. The American presence, urban culture, young people, the body and signs of a rapidly changing society recur throughout, without forming a conventional narrative.
One of the keys to I Am a King lies in its editing. Photographs taken at different times and under different circumstances are connected through visual associations, shifts in scale and contrasts between people, objects and spaces. Meaning depends not only on each photograph, but also on the way the images follow one another within the book.
I Am a King thus offers a particularly direct approach to Tomatsu's visual world: fragmentary, subjective and deeply rooted in the Japan he experienced. An especially interesting title among Japanese photobooks of the seventies, it also reveals the importance that sequencing and design acquired within his photography.