Tetsuya Ichimura - Salome - 1970

Salome

Tetsuya Ichimura
Gendaishinsha/1970/japanese/270*390*30/Limited to 500 copies. /Missing Shipping Box

Japanese photographer Tetsuya Ichimura’s photo book, *Salome: Mental Landscapes from the Body*. Starting with factory workers in the United States, Ichimura continued to take photographs while working a series of jobs, including as a peddler of daily necessities, a caricaturist, a financial company employee, and a liaison at a PR firm. After winning a special award at the International Subjectivist Photography Exhibition held at Takashimaya in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, in 1956, he went on to present works centered on the themes of “women” and “nudes,” and his avant-garde and experimental expressions of eroticism have been highly acclaimed. This book, created in collaboration with novelist Koichiro Uno, interprets Oscar Wilde’s play *Salome*—based on the New Testament—using Uno’s translation of the text and Ichimura’s photographs. Salome, a woman who has captivated and served as a motif for many painters, including Picasso. Salome, a woman of such beauty that she drives men mad yet ultimately meets a tragic end, was captured by Ichimura, who later wrote, “I want readers to think that I photographed her because I was moved by the intensity of the act of a ‘woman’ falling deeply in love with a man.” Ichimura transformed the alluring mystery of Salome—often referred to as a “femme fatale”—into his signature style of female nude photography, rendering it with deep monochrome contrasts.