Soul and soul

Kiyoshi Suzuki
Soul and soul

Photographs: Kiyoshi Suzuki

Publisher: Self-published

92 pages

Pictures: 81

Year: 1972

Comments: Black linen hardcover under a white dust jacket as issued. 211 x 234 mm. Black & white photographs. First edition, 1972. Limited edition of 1500 copies. Included in Ivan Vartanian & Ryuichi Kaneko, Les Livres de photographies japonais, p.188. A small tears on jacket (which has been repaired) otherwise in very good condition!

Soul and Soul was Suzuki’s first book, published in 1972. It is so beautifully dark and it has remarkable coherence. You wander around inside a highly obscure world and suddenly, the photographer begins to appear from out of nowhere. You sense him, you feel him. It is what the best photography does. Soul and Soul is a masterful first book—the Japanese title Nagare No Uta means Song of Drifting / Song of Floating / Song of Wandering. It belongs in the select company of the simply beautiful first book, like La Banlieue de Paris by Robert Doisneau, A Dialogue with Solitude by Dave Heath,Children of Europe by David Seymour, The Sweet Flypaper of Life by Roy DeCarava, to name a few.

(Machiel Botman)