Nippon Camera 日本カメラ
March 1950 - May 2021
Monthly
B5 size, approx. 18 x 26 cm
Founding Publisher: Kōgeisha ( Tokyo)
Founding Editor: Fujikawa Toshiyuki
Nippon Camera started as a bimonthly magazine as the successor to the book series Amachua Shashin Sōsho ( Amateur Photography Library; October 1948 - December 1949, 7 volumes), each volume of which had been devoted to a special topic as ’Skillful Use of the Camera’.
It became a monthly magazine from July 1951
The publishers name was changed to Nippon Camera-sha in November 1953.
The editors, photography critic Tanaka Masao and former Shashin no Kyōshitsu editor Ikegami Yūichi, maintained a careful balance between amateur and professional photography.
Photographer Kajiwara Takao served as editor from 1975 to 1998. Together with Asahi Camera, Nippon Camera has remained one of the most popular photography magazines in Japan.
Almost a year after Asahi Camera, Nippon Camera magazine had ceased publication with the May 2021 issue. Their official notice dated April 15, 2021 only said that, “It has become difficult to continue publishing the magazine.”
Tokyo-based Nippon Camera-sha, the company publishing the magazine, also dissolved, on April 30, 2021. The company also published how-to camera magazine-books and photo technique books, so all these disappeared too.
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Suda Issei; Country of Folk Song - 3, 10 pages.
Suda's first photobook contains his most representative work.
Fūshi Kaden is part of the Asahi Sonorama series of photobooks, 27 volumes published between 1977 and 1980
“Suda’s photography seems to be trying to grasp scenes remembered from bygone days, preserved despite the passage of time - everyday life, local festivals, the sliding doors typical of a traditional Japanese home, children dressed up for special occasions, a sleeping cat, an old woman with flowers, kids on a school trip, or the painted face of a Kabuki actor.
Yet these are not simple idealizations of the past. The way the photographs have been taken reveals something slightly unsettled. Many of the subjects’ gestures seem suspended in time, as though Suda took the photograph one moment too soon or too late. Someone is just about to turn; someone blinks just when the shutter is released; a participant in a festival holds his hands in the air mid-clap and with his leg at a weird angle.(…)
The matter-of-factness of Suda’s photography gives a sense of balance and detachment while at the same time suggesting an otherworldliness”.(…)
Ryūchi Kaneko and Ivan Vartanian ; Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 1970s, Aperture / Goliga Books 2009
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Fukase Masahisa; Memories of Father, 8 pages.
Hara Yoshiichi ; Mandala Zukan 2 , 6 pages.
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