Shomei Tomatsu - I'm a King - 1972

Shomei Tomatsu 'I'm a King'

Shashin Hyoronsha, Tokyo 1972

First Edition

softcover in cardboard box

Size: 24 x 21 cm

Pages: 272

In 1972, at the age of forty-two and already established as one of Japan's most important photographers, Tomatsu moved to Okinawa. 'I am a King' is his magnum opus of this period. The book gathers portraits of politicians, roadside scenes, 1960's era protests, images of industrial detritus, and the urban skyline. A persistent theme is the Americanization of post WWII Japan and the upheaval it wrought on traditional Japanese culture.

'I Am a King' has, as its center, a section produced at the height of the student protests, in 1969-70, and in this section he pairs photographs with a month's worth of his own diary entries. The fact that the text is his own, places Tomatsu's book far from the Japanese photobooks of the prewar period, in which photographers' efforts were often framed with essays or statements by hired critics. The book is typical of Tomatsu's oeuvre, in that it magnifies documentary photography through the use of montage, abstraction and the mixing of color and black-and-white images.