Katsumi Watanabe - Hot Dog - 2001

A collection of photos by Katsumi Watanabe, a prominent Japanese photographer, 'HotDog Shinjuku 1999-2000 Katsumi Watanabe Photo Album.' He became interested in photography during his service at a newspaper company, studied studio photography at the Tojo Kaikan Photography Department after moving to Tokyo, and was later influenced by a senior photographer in Shinjuku. He purchased an enlarger with a small pension and took portraits for 200 yen per set of three, while wandering through Shinjuku at night. Katsumi Watanabe endured hunger, cut expenses, and continued capturing images of people such as vagabonds, prostitutes, gays, delinquents, and yakuza. "A city where secret things emerge, then surface and disappear like bubbles" "A city where something new is made in the shadows and soon reappears." A city as strange and attractive, severe and friendly, as Shinjuku. This book consists of photographs taken in the late 1990s, during the second half of Watanabe's career. Compared to the photographs and works from the early 1960s and early 1970s, one can enjoy the transition of the Shinjuku era, including the emergence of Kogal.
The book has a plastic cover protecting the binding, but it is held with tape, as can be seen in one of the recent photographs.