Eric Chaim Kline, Bookseller

写真画集長崎 Shashin gashu / Souvenir du Nagasaki / A Sentimental Night in Japan [A pictorialist photo study of Nagasaki prior to the Atom Bomb]

井手傳次郎 Ide, Denjiro (Photographs by)

Nagasaki: Hibiki Shashin-kan, 1931. Third edition. Hardcover. Folio (12 1/8 x 9"). [11] leaves (Text), 114 leaves (Plates). Original full velvet yapp binding with debossed titles in Japanese and French, and gilt illustrated mounted leather plate to front cover. Back cover with checkered pattern and embossed publisher's name.

Published by the Hibiki Shashin-kan, a commercial studio run by Ide Denjiro in Nagasaki during the 1920s and 30s, this scarce work is Denjiro's own creative vision of Nagasaki.

Ide Denjiro experimented with the various printing techniques to produce soft, pictorialist, emotionally laden images. The famed Japanese photographer here shows soft focus and melancholic views of a city that would be changed forever on that fateful day of August 9, 1945, when an atomic bomb was dropped, wiping out over 80% of the city, and killing between 39,000 to 80,000 people.

The 114 numbered plates show primarily photographs in photogravure and collotype process, as well as illustrations, including several multi-colored block prints.

See: Manfred Heiting and Kaneko Ryuichi's "The Japanese Photobook, 1912-1990," Steidl, 2017. p.58.

Some age-toning and fading to velvet. Spine rubbed. Some minor to moderate foxing throughout, mostly to very first and very last pages. Binding in overall good-, interior in good+ to very good condition. g to vg. Item #45144

Price: $2,750.00