Ravens

Reprinting Autumn 2024 - we are taking advance orders or you can email [email protected] if you want to reserve a copy without paying in advance.

Masahisa Fukase’s Ravens (sometimes The Solitude of Ravens) was voted the best book of the last 25 years by the BJP’s panel of experts in 2010. As the last edition was published in 2008 and went quickly out of print, many photobook enthusiasts will not have seen a copy. Mack are publishing a bilingual facsimile of the first hardback edition, accompanied by a booklet positioning it in the history of Japanese photography and Fukase’s work. The coastal landscapes of Hokkaido serve as the backdrop for his profoundly dark and impressionistic photographs of flocks of crows. The work has been interpreted as an ominous allegory for postwar Japan. As they were made in the immediate aftermath of Fukase’s separation from his wife, who had been a central subject of his earlier photography, they can also be seen as foreshadowing his subsequent emotional and metal decline.

Sample images

Publisher's Description

Consistently proclaimed as one of the most important photobooks in the history of the medium, Solitude of Ravens by Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase was first published in 1984 and the two subsequent editions have both been short runs and have sold out immediately. This bilingual facsimile of the first hardback edition is accompanied by a booklet positioning the body of work in the history of Japanese photography and Fukase’s oeuvre. 

Fukase’s haunting series of work was made between 1975 and 1982 in the aftermath of a divorce and was apparently triggered by a mournful train journey to his hometown. The coastal landscapes of Hokkaido serve as the backdrop for his profoundly dark and impressionistic photographs of ominous flocks of crows. The work has been interpreted as an ominous allegory for postwar Japan. 

Masahisa Fukase (b. 1934, Hokkaido; d. 2012) graduated from the Nihon University College of Art’s Photography Department in 1956. Fukase became a freelance photographer in 1968 after working at the Nippon Design Center and Kawade Shobo Shinsha Publishers. His major books include Yugi [Homo Ludence] (Chuokoronsha, 1971); Yoko (Asahi Sonorama, 1978), and Karasu [Ravens] (Sokyusha, 1986). Countless solo exhibitions have been dedicated to Fukase’s work, and his photographs have been included in group exhibitions at the MoMA, NY; Oxford Museum of Art; Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris; V&A, London. Fukase also won numerous prizes, including the 2nd Ina Nobuo Award in 1976 for his exhibition “Karasu” and the Special Award at the 8th Higashikawa Photography Awards in 1992. Fukase tragically fell down a set of stairs in 1992 and suffered a traumatic brain injury from which he never recovered. He passed away in 2012.

Sample images

136 pages
80 black & white plates
26.3 cm x 26.3 cm

Publication date: May 2017