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PROVOKE (Provocative Materials for Thought): Complete Reprint of 3 Volumes (NITESHA Reissue) [Volume 2 SIGNED by Daido Moriyama]

Publisher: Tokyo: NITESHA, 2019
Edition: 1st Edition
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: New / No dust jacket as issued
Item #: 113328

$195.00

Specifics

First edition thus (facsimile reissue), first printing. Three soft cover volumes with a supplement including translations of all texts in English and Chinese. Enclosed in a clear plastic carrying bag (with the title "PROVOKE" printed in white).

All texts in Japanese, with English and Chinese translations printed separately to accompany the volumes as a supplement.

This facsimile reprint maintains the original size of the images and includes all original texts, along with the ones by Takahiko Okada (excluded from “The Japanese Box” reissue due to copyright issues).

Volume 2 is boldly signed in pencil (in English, “Daido”) opposite the first page by Moriyama.

Volume 1: 210×210mm, 68 pages, printed soft cover wrappers.
Photographs by Koji Taki, Yutaka Takanashi, and Takuma Nakahira. Texts by Takahiko Okada and Koji Taki.

Volume 2: 242×180mm, 109 pages, printed soft cover wrappers with printed wrap-around obi band.
Photographs by Takuma Nakahira, Daido Moriyama, Yutaka Takanashi, and Koji Taki. Texts by Takahiko Okada. Signed by Moriyama.

Volume 3: 240×184mm, 110 pages, printed soft cover wrappers.
Photographs by Yutaka Takanashi, Koji Taki, Daido Moriyama, and Takuma Nakahira. Texts by Gozo Yoshimasu and Takahiko Okada.

Condition

New in publisher's packaging.

Description

From the publisher: “2018 marks the 50th year since Provoke had first been published. Provoke was first published in November 1968 as a dojin-shi, or self-published magazine. It was originally conceived by art critic Koji Taki (1928-2011) and photographer Takuma Nakahira (1938-2015), with poet Takahiko Okada (1939-1997) and photographer Yutaka Takanashi as dojin members.

The subtitle for the magazine was “Provocative Materials for Thought,” and each issue was composed of photographs, essays and poems. After releasing the second and third issue with Daido Moriyama as a subsequent member, the group broke up with their last publication First, Abandon the World of Pseudo-Certainty - an overview edition of the three issues. Provoke’s grainy, blurry, and out-of-focus photographs were initially ridiculed as are-bure-boke and stirred a great deal of controversy, yet it had created a strong impact inside and outside of the photography world during that time. However, today, Provoke has become an extremely rare book and very few people have seen the original.

Why does Provoke matter today? Provoke has been attracting increasing attention in recent years, in and out of Japan. In 2016, an extensive photography exhibition entitled Provoke: Between Protest and Performance Photography in Japan, 1960-1975 opened first in Austria, then toured to Switzerland, France and the United States. Provoke has challenged existing photographic conventions and posed fundamental questions of visual perception, in the midst of the social and political upheaval during the late sixties. Now the world is gradually recognizing and re-examining its significance in a multitude of contexts.

How does NITESHA’s Provoke Complete Reprint differ from the one in The Japanese Box, released in 2001?: Published as part of The Japanese Box: Facsimile Reprint of Six Rare Photographic Publications of the Provoke Era, Provoke's facsimile reprint has its photographic images cropped approximately 3 mm from the edges for bookbinding purposes. The reprint also does not include texts by Takahiko Okada due to copyright reasons. Provoke Complete Reprint by NITESHA maintains the original size of the images and includes all original texts, along with the ones by Takahiko Okada. In addition, the volumes will be accompanied by complete English and Chinese translations of the original Japanese texts as a booklet.”