Asako Narahashi — NU·E
Tōkyō: Sohkyu-Sha & Mole. First edition, first printing. 126 pp., 28.9 x 22.8 cm. Text in English and Japanese. Condition: Fine (F). Minimal traces of use; else fine. Black-and-white photographs of Japanese cities and countryside after the period of rapid economic growth, organised around the nue, a legendary Japanese creature with a monkey's head, tiger's legs and a snake's tail. Narahashi treats the nue as a metaphor for something with no fixed outline whose form keeps shifting, and the photographs try to show what cannot usually be seen. The book gathers the NU-E series, shown in seventeen exhibitions at her own gallery, 03FOTOS, between 1992 and 1997. It is her debut photobook. The work grew out of her participation in Daido Moriyama's FotoSession workshops in the late 1980s.
