Anrakuji by Emi Anrakuji. First edition (2006). First impression in as new condition. No markings. Binding firm. Pages clean. Please see pictures. PayPal accepted, any questions please get in touch. About Anrakuji Emi Anrakuji’s unsettling self-portraits and other subjects have earned her a growing recognition in her home country. As a result we are pleased to present her first monograph to be published outside of Japan. The artist represents herself as an alchemist of images and also a catalyst for daydreams and desires. As a result, the vignettes of jigsaw puzzle-like shots of herself and others blur the boundaries between documentary and staged photography. So, posing naked, clothed, or partially dressed, she takes a uniquely obsessive interest in her own body. Her legs, arms, hands, toes, lips and hair create arresting compositions and erotic ambiance. When she focuses on the opposite sex, it results in equally surprising elaborations on the male anatomy. This obsession with the human body at its most intimate is a result, in part, from her long periods spent hospitalized: after graduating from art school in Tokyo in the mid-1980s, Anrakuji suffered a cerebral tumor that prevented her from making art for more than a decade. During her gradual recovery, she began to make block prints, then photographs. Emi Anrakuji is this year’s winner of the prestigious New Photographer Award at the Higashikawa Photography Prize.
