FANTOMBOOKS DEBUTS WITH TAKASHI HOMMA

Takashi Homma Vedove Widows







Fantombooks has just released its first volume, Vedove/Widows by Takashi Homma, curated by Francesco Zanot and designed by Fabrizio Radaelli.


The book, extremely accurate in concept and printing, is published in an edition of 350 copies (2 volumes: pages 16 + 55, cm. 23 x 17) and will be available online at fantomeditions.com and in few selected bookshops.


The project is the result of the cooperation between Andrea Botto and Francesco Zanot, respectively director and curator of the annual Rapallo Fotografia festival, who entrusted the Japanese photographer to work around the theme of memory and personal archives in Rapallo and in the Italian region of Liguria.
During his stay in the area, fascinated by the pictures stored in the archives of Genoa and Rapallo, Homma explored the need to preserve personal and intimate memories, especially after a loss.
Thus he shot eleven portraits of widowed women - witnesses for their dead partners’ memories - and captured a glimpse of the places where the widows live. This work being the subject of the exhibition at Castello di Rapallo.
He also re-photographed the snapshots of the widows’ family albums, exclusively published in the book which represents therefore an integral part of the project and the exhibition.


Born in 1962 in Tokyo, where he lives and works, Takashi Homma studied photography at Nihon University College of Art. In 1984 he started to work in advertising and in 1991 he moved to London. In 1999 he won the Kimura Ihei Commemorative Photography Award for his project Tokyo Suburbia, now an extremely rare cult book.


Fantombooks is the book series arising from Fantom magazine, a new international photographic quarterly edited between Milan and New York by Selva Barni and Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, and published by Boiler Corporation, Milano. The series will release only a few carefully selected titles, each designed by a different art director, produced in its own specific format and distributed through selected bookstores worldwide.


For further information please write to: info@fantomeditions.com



SOLD OUT


We are sorry but Vedove/Widows has sold out.
You can still try and get a copy of the book throught these booksellers.

New York (U.S.A.)
Dashwood Books
33 Bond Street, NY 10012.

Paris (France)
Le BAL
6 Impasse de la Défense, Paris 75018.

Librairie du Palais de Tokyo
13 Avenue du Président Wilson, Paris 75116.

Osaka (Japan)
Standard Bookstore
Crysta Grand Building 2-2-12, Nishi-Shinsaibashi Chuo-Ku, Osaka 542-0086.

Santa Fe (U.S.A.)
Photo-Eye Bookstore
370 Garcia Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501.

Tokyo (Japan)
Now Idea by Utrecht
5-3-8-201, Minami-Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0062.


FEEDBACK


Sebastian Arthur Hau, Photo-eye Magazine (U.S.), July 2010


Michele Smargiassi, Repubblica.it, January 2010

"Get this curious catalogue, a graceful and fine multi-volume book tied up with a rubber band, and you will realize that the widows who really matter for the photographer are the pictures themselves. Widows, since they are lacking in the other half of their essence, which gave meaning to the first part of their life by filling it with affective contents. The lost sense of their family pictures, private pictures (that are the great majority in the world), is their dead husband, permanently lost and missed. Takashi works on what remains: assonances of shapes, colours, exposures/poses, hospitality in the sweet yet melancholic receptacle of a printed page. Very interesting".

Days Fall like leaves (U.K), July 2010


Utrecht/Now Idea/aMoule (Japan), April 2010

Shane Lavalette / Journal (Boston), April 2010

eyecurious books etc., March 2010

Little Brown Miscellanea, by Alec Soth, February 2010

Little Brown Mushroom Blog, by Alec Soth, February 2010