Bernard DescampsJAPON (SIGNED)

This book is a guide. Or rather a non-guide. It doesn't talk about history or geography - in fact, it doesn't talk at all. It shows images, impressions or illusions, since photography above all lets us see the unspeakable... It proposes a wandering from Hokkaido to Osaka, via Tokyo, Nara, Kyoto... Episodic journeys from 1992 to 1995. An aimless journey, except to encounter images, my images, those that are inside me and that I tirelessly try to bring to light. A silent journey, full of questions, constantly shifting from one Japan to another, the Japan of Zen gardens and the Japan of pachinko! A journey where reality and fiction, history and futility, mysticism and the superfluous, fake real trees and fake real geishas, melancholy monkeys and whales in trompe-l'œil, people who cross paths, cross paths... Urban wandering. The city, civilisation, unreasoning technology and age-old wisdom hovering over the most beautiful gardens in the world. All I did was look and imagine. The pleasure of seeing and showing these fragments of time that slip away and that the photographer tries to catch up with. Images, just images. Fragments of the passing photographer.

- Bernard Descamps

Hardcover in a slipcase, 22 x 11,3 cm, b&w photographs. In good condition. Edgewear and stains on the splicase. Edgewear and few bumps on the book's spine. Signed by Bernard Descamps.