Sawatari Hajime - Alice from the sea - 1979

"Alice from the Sea" is born after the success of Hajime Sawatari's photographic version of "Alice," who interprets the literary classic by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) "Alice in Wonderland" where Sawatari engages with and brilliantly recreates the themes, forms, and symbolisms within the original narrative, focusing on the inevitable loss of childish innocence, of a girl confronted by the realities of adulthood. Sawatari's Wonderland is a world where the absurd is juxtaposed with reality, where phenomena of the real intertwine with the unconscious, leading each viewer through a narrative that explores a world that confronts the audience with the surreal, reversing the roles between child and adult within this series of unpublished photographs. The model is Samantha, a 10-year-old girl who was contracted for this role of Alice, selected in an audition held in England, the hometown of Alice and the place where these photographs were made. "Alice from the Sea" has exquisite design, as we can see in the endpapers, the cover, and the edition; the book is a sequel made four years later using the same model Samantha, on the coast of Scotland and Ireland. Shuntaro Tanikawa's poetry is added as in the previous work, and the binding and design are handled by Seiichi Horiuchi. The book has its original box and obi. The box bears a different photograph on each side."