Masahisa Fukase - Bukubuku

Masahisa Fukase
Bukubuku

Published by Hysteric Glamor / Nobuhiko Kitamura, 2004
Size: 26 x 23 x 1 cm
Hardcover

This is Fukase's last series before he fell down the stairs in 1992, leaving him in a coma for ten years and until his death. The series consisted of a series of amusing self-portraits in the bathtub, taken with an underwater camera. A rare collector's book.

From Koko Yamagishi's essay: "Bukubuku is remembered among us as Masahisa Fukase's unpublished work, a series that had been sealed, so to speak. At the time [February 1992], there was, behind the scenes, a growing atmosphere where people had begun to have misgivings about Fukase's confused and failing behaviors. Friends had begun to worry about his living alone, and when the accident occurred, the whole event itself, too, was taken as an incident that characterizes Fukase as a photographer. What strikes me now, looking through Fukase's latest series, is the way in which they were supported by careful examination in order to produce specific images. They were taken carefully as he calmly and precisely settled himself into the tiny, unsteadily floating stainless steel tub. Fukase's act of photography, where the telltale digital numbers showed the date, continued for exactly one month.