JAPAN FOCUS : YUGENSHA • SPECIAL PRESENTATION HOSTED BY TWELVEBOOKS
Twelvebooks is proud to announce the launch of a special presentation at Galerie &co119, showcasing the full range of publications by YUGENSHA, the world’s first independent publishing house established by the late Kazuhiko Motomura, a publisher and editor. Motomura approached Robert Frank to create a photo collection, which was later released as The Lines of My Hand in 1972. Since the publication of his landmark collection The Americans in 1958, Frank had taken a step back from photography and was shifting into film-making. It is fair to say that Motomura was pivotal in Frank’s return to still images.
Founded in 1971, YUGENSHA started with their first publication, The Lines of My Hand(1972), Robert Frank’s critically acclaimed retrospective of his early work from before the release of The Americans. YUGENSHA has published four photography books, three of which were made in collaboration between Motomura and Frank. The second is River, Its Shadow of Shadows (1978) by Jun Morinaga who has been documenting the decaying rivers running through Tokyo. The third is Robert Frank’s Flower is … (1987) consisting of three bodies of work. The first suite consists of flower photographs taken in Paris between 1949 and 1951; the second, photographs of Detroit car factories and pictures of the American South in 1955; the third and final suite, photographs of Nova Scotia taken between 1976 and 1984. And the last publication by YUGENSHA is Franks’ The Americans, 81 Contact Sheets (2009), consisting of the 81 contact sheets containing frames that were published in The Americans and later donated to the National Gallery of Art, Washington by the photographer himself.
All books are designed by graphic designer Kohei Sugiura, who is famous for his designs for Kikuji Kawada’s Chizu / The Map and Eiko Hosoe’s Barakei among others.
About Yugensha
Founded in 1971 as the world’s first independent publisher by Kazuhiko Motomura in Tokyo. Their first book The Lines of My Hand (1971) by Robert Frank won Yugensha a reputation all over the world. Yugensha published 4 books in over 4 decades of career including 2 other books with Robert Franck Flower is… (1987) & The Americans, 81 Contact Sheets (2009) and River, its shadow of shadows (1978) with Jun Morinaga. Kazuhiko Motomura passed away in 2014.
About twelveooks
twelvebooks is a Tokyo based book distributor founded in 2010. It markets and distributes international publications on contemporary photography in Japan and Asia, with the uttermost respect for the concept and philosophy of the publisher and the artist. twelvebooks starts project- based distribution of Japanese photobooks internationally from 2016 and Yugensha is their first contracted publisher.
Dates : Nov. 8 to Dec. 23, 2016
Pop up store opening : Nov. 8 from 5pm to 9pm
Place : Gallery &co119, Paris
This event is sponsored by “Nanbu Bijin” / Japanese Sake Company