Kyo Sasaki - Do It！ - 1984

Do It！

Kyo Sasaki
Byakuyashobou/1984/japanese/180*235*10

“Yacchimae! / Do It!” is a photo book by Japanese photographer Kyō Sasaki. Sasaki, a professional photographer who spent over 30 years pursuing women on the streets and is nicknamed “Machine Gun Kyō,” is likely better known to many for his books on picking up women—such as *To Put It Simply: A Book on Picking Up Women* (1986) and *Diary of a Pickup Photographer* (1995)—than for his numerous photographic works. He is a legendary photographer who approached passersby in Ueno, Shinjuku, and Harajuku, photographing the nude bodies of well over 5,000 women. This book is a photo collection published as a special issue of the magazine *Shashin Jidai* (Photography Era)—known for the editorial partnership between Akira Suei and Nobuyoshi Araki—featuring 340 women in both color and black-and-white, selected by Suei from the photos Sasaki had accumulated over a 15-year period. “My photographs are neither portraits nor mere nudes; to put it plainly, they are documentaries,” Sasaki states, and Suei also describes Sasaki’s work as a documentary of the sex industry. The book concludes with an interview that unravels Sasaki’s approach to photography, explaining how his focus shifted from picking up women to taking photographs.