"RESTORED TO US THE SHAPE OF OURSELVES"

TSUCHIDA, Hiromi. Zokushin. Gods of the Earth. Yokohama: OTTOS Books, 1976. Oblong quarto, original full white cloth, original dust jacket, original slipcase. $1250.

First edition, signed and dated (“76.2”)by Tsuchida, richly illustrated with 103 photogravures.

"The eye of photographer Tsuchida has cut away the frantic rush, the fashion we moderns garb ourselves with-has, as it were, stopped time. Trappings of the present like elevators and cars have vanished from his pictures, and in their place, captured in the breaks in our busyness, in our leisure, all unawares, we have had restored to us the shape of ourselves" (Toshinobu Yasunaga). To take this photographs, Tsuchida has "been wandering these past several years in mountains, villages, towns and cities in pursuit, for the most part, of festivals and religious space. My wandering was not in response to a definite plan, in fact it was quite arbitrary. I suppose what I was trying to do was to find myself again as a Japanese." Tsuchida makes the strange familiar, and the familiar, strange, in this masterful collection of photographs. With introduction in Japanese and English by Goichi Matsunaga.

Lightest wear to edge of dust jacket. A fine copy.