Koh Kitamura - Rules of Photography 2 - 2000

“Rules of Photography 2

Koh Kitamura
Kyoichi Tsuzuki Office/2000/japanese/108*150*25

“Nude Cosmos: Ko Kitamura’s Photographic Principles, Vol. 2,” a collection of works by Japanese photographer Ko Kitamura (1930–). Kimi Kitamura, who began photography while a student at Tokyo University of the Arts, is a unique photographer who has continued to photograph female nudes for many years while maintaining a distance from the mainstream photography scene and the world of commercial photography. His work is not intended for exhibitions or magazine publication; rather, it is an extremely personal practice driven by personal passion and determination, through which he has produced a vast body of work outside the mainstream of Japanese photographic history. This book is part of the “Photography Rules” series, edited and introduced by Kyoichi Tsuzuki, who has focused his attention on Kitamura’s archive. Tsuzuki—known for *ROADSIDE JAPAN* and other works—has consistently shed light on unknown artists and cultures that fall outside established values, and this same interest is strongly reflected in his approach to Kimi Kitamura’s work. Rather than being refined as fine art photography, the nude photographs included here convey the weight of the act of photography itself, carried out continuously for nearly half a century. While existing on the fringes of Japan’s history of nude photography, this book—as a vast record born of personal desire and creative impulse—prompts us to reconsider the depth and richness of amateur photographic culture.