• `Keizō Kitajima — 東京 No. 2 (Tokyo No. 2), Photo Express Tokyo, February 1979. Front cover. High-contrast black and white photograph of two figures in close proximity, faces partially obscured, one in a leather jacket, set against a dark ground with diagonal structural elements. Title in teal kanji and Latin type upper centre: 東京 No 2. Date and price: 1979. FEBRUARY · 200 YEN. Green circular stamps along foot reading: 写 真 特 急 便 〒 北 島 敬 三 (Photo Express Mail, Kitajima Keizō).`
  • `Keizō Kitajima — Photo Express Tokyo No. 2, February 1979 — interior plate. High-contrast black and white photograph of a woman seated at low angle, wearing a floral-patterned qipao dress, platform shoes, and a wide-brimmed hat. Face tilted upward, smiling, body angled toward camera. Flash-bleached highlights against deep black ground. Tokyo nightlife, 1979.`
  • `Keizō Kitajima — Photo Express Tokyo No. 2, February 1979 — interior plate. High-contrast black and white photograph of two figures in extreme close-up: a woman wearing large dark sunglasses holding a cigarette, mouth slightly open, face turned toward a second figure whose lips are close to her cheek. Grain pushed to near-abstraction. Tokyo nightlife, 1979.`
  • `Keizō Kitajima — Photo Express Tokyo No. 2, February 1979 — interior plate. High-contrast black and white photograph of a woman standing in a darkened interior, face turned upward in profile, wearing a sheer or satin robe-like garment that catches the light. Vertical streaks of flash illumination against deep black. Japanese text column in teal ink along right margin. Tokyo nightlife, 1979.`
  • `Keizō Kitajima — Photo Express Tokyo No. 2, February 1979 — back cover. High-contrast black and white photograph of a figure leaning back over a chair, mouth open, arm raised, face caught in flash light against a patterned background. Small teal text block and postage stamp upper right. Staple binding visible at left spine. Heavy wear and creasing to covers.`
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CAMP Gallery

Keizō Kitajima — Photo Express Tokyo No. 2, February 1979

Keizō Kitajima — Photo Express Tokyo No. 2, February 1979

£50.00 GBP
£50.00 GBP
Sale Sold out
Taxes included.

Tokyo, February 1979
Softcover photographic booklet
16 pp.
25.8 × 18.3 cm
Black-and-white offset print with spot colour
200 yen cover price

Second issue from Keizō Kitajima’s Photo Express Tokyo, a twelve-part sequence of monthly photographic booklets published in 1979 in connection with his year-long exhibition project at CAMP gallery, Tokyo. Each issue contained sixteen pages and operated as both publication and immediate extension of the exhibition.

The images are high-contrast, nocturnal, unstable. Figures emerge through flash, grain, clothing, cigarette smoke, sunglasses, surface glare. Tokyo appears less as city than as printed impact: bodies pressed into black ink, social space reduced to gesture, pose, and exposure.

The cover gives the structure clearly: Tokyo, No. 2, February 1979, 200 yen. The publication is not a later photobook in the conventional sense, but a fast object — made to circulate close to the time of the photographs and the exhibition itself. The booklet format keeps the work provisional, serial, and disposable.

Condition: Good. Surface rubbing, creasing, edge wear, and handling marks throughout. Stapled spine intact. General wear consistent with age and circulation.

A printed fragment from one of the key late-1970s Japanese photobook projects: serial, urban, immediate, and already half-consumed by its own reproduction.

This appears to be an original 1979 issue, not the 2012 Steidl/Le Bal facsimile, based on the single No. 2 booklet format, 200 yen cover price, period wear, and absence of slipcase, ISBN, or reprint markings. The 2012 edition reissued all twelve booklets as a facsimile set in slipcase. Offered as “apparently first issue” pending colophon confirmation.

Original period item, apparently first issue.

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