Private Scenes

Private Scenes (Shikei) is the series regarded as the culmination of Masahisa Fukase's work. This book is built from the prints shown in his two exhibitions of the series, in 1990 and 1992. Published by Akaaka Art Publishing in 2023.

The story behind the book

For Private Scenes: Letters from Journeys (1990), Fukase photographed Europe and India holding the camera in one hand and turning it toward himself, so that his own hand, feet or face appear in the frame. He wrote that everything photographed this way is a reflection of himself, and named the series Shikei, "private scenes".

In Private Scenes '92, he painted over gelatin silver prints with watercolour, drawing on his roots in a family that ran a photo studio, with brushwork that breaks out of the photograph. It was his last exhibition before his career came to an end.

What is in the book

• Photographs from Private Scenes: Letters from Journeys (1990) and Private Scenes '92
• 192 pages, hardcover

About Masahisa Fukase

Born in 1934 in Hokkaido, Fukase was shown in New Japanese Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1974, and went on to exhibit around the world. His series Ravens is widely regarded as a landmark of Japanese photography. A serious accident in 1992 ended his career, and he died in 2012. Since then, retrospectives have been held at the Rencontres d'Arles (2017) and Foam in Amsterdam (2018).