
Japanese Blue
- Publisher
- Akaaka Art Publishing
- Year
- 2025
- ISBN
- 978-4-86541-207-9
- Specifications
- Hardcover
230 x 260 mm
128 pages
Essay by Yuki Kasama
The signature series of Norio Kobayashi, photographed over more than thirty years from 1991 to 2024 and published for the first time as a photobook: landscapes with blue tarpaulin sheets, an artificial blue laid over urban building sites, suburban slopes, roofs and piles of waste, in temporary and anonymous places. Blue tarps appear in all conditions, from brand new to torn and weathered. The early work was shot on medium- and large-format film, the recent work digitally, so the area and texture of the blue change with the years. First published in the magazine Asahi Camera in the early 1990s, the series sheds light on the memory and present of the Japanese landscape and on the relationship between the man-made and the natural, between collapse and renewal. An essay by Yuki Kasama accompanies the pictures.