Beschreibung:

Ultimate Masahisa Fukase 襟裳岬 [Erimo Misaki] Cape Erimo from 鴉 [Karasu] Ravens 1976 Gelatin silver print, printed 1986. Image: 28.2 x 42.2 cm (11 1/8 x 16 5/8 in.) Sheet: 36.5 x 49.1 cm (14 3/8 x 19 3/8 in.) Signed in rōmaji in ink in the margin; annotated ‘Hokkaido Erimo Misaki’ in Japanese and dated ‘76’ and ‘86’ in pencil on the verso. Accompanied by Zeit-Foto Salon gallery label. This work is one of only two known extant large-format exhibition prints made by Fukase of his most-iconic Ravens image; the other print, held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is signed in pencil on the verso and similar in print date and size. As of this writing, a total of only five self-made prints of this image are known to exist. Aside from the two exhibition prints, the print dates of the other three works, which are smaller in size and held privately, are unknown.
Provenance Zeit-Foto Salon, Tokyo Private Collection, Tokyo Exhibited Black Sun: The Eyes of Four, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 8 December 1985 – 9 February 1986; Serpentine Gallery, London, 17 May – 15 June 1986; Philadelphia Museum of Art, 9 August – 26 October 1986; University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, 28 March – 17 May 1987, San Diego Museum of Art, 12 September – 8 November 1987, and Baltimore Museum of Art, 9 August – 2 October 1988, for another print 鴉 Ravens, Zeit-Foto Salon,Tokyo, 2 – 21 February 1987, for the present lot Literature M. Fukase, S. Yamagishi, ed., 洋子 Yohko, Asahi Sonorama, 1978, n.p. M. Holborn, Black Sun: The Eyes of Four, Aperture, 1986, p. 49 M. Fukase, A. Hasegawa, ed., 鴉 Ravens, Sokyu-sha, 1986, cover (blind-stamped) and p. 3 M. Fukase, A. Hasegawa, ed., The solitude of Ravens, Bedford Arts, 1991, p. 3 Fukase Masahisa Nihon no shashinka 34 [Japanese Photographers, Vol. 34], Iwanami-shoten, 1998, pl. 23 I. Vartanian, ed., Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographers, Aperture, 2006, p. 189 Catalogue Essay ‘The Ravens themselves weren’t really the point. I myself had become a raven.’ Masahisa Fukase In the summer of 1976, Masahisa Fukase travelled from Tokyo to his hometown in Hokkaido and began to photograph ravens, an ill omen in Japan. This escape home was precipitated by his divorce from Yoko Wanibe, his muse and wife of 12 tumultuous years. Fukase’s gravitation towards ravens during this period mirrored his own solitude and misfortune. The images of ravens captured by Fukase express the emotions he felt as his personal life collapsed. The present photograph, which can be read as a self-portrait, was taken at Cape Erimo in Hokkaido during this journey that would launch his epic Ravens series. Fukase’s 烏 Crows exhibition, the first presentation of his ravens images, opened later that year in October at Nikon Salon in Ginza and then travelled to Nikon Salon in Shinjuku and Osaka. Highly praised in Japan, the exhibition won Fukase the second annual Ina Nobuo Award. Installation shots from the time attest that the image offered here was exhibited only at Ginza Nikon Salon and it is likely that this exhibited print has not survived. Also in the autumn of 1976, Fukase’s ravens images were published for the first time when they appeared in the monthly magazine Camera Mainichi. Two years later, the influential photobook 洋子 Yohko was produced, publishing the present image for the very first time. In this revealing book, the story of Fukase and Yoko’s life together is punctuated by ominous images of ravens. It is unknown whether the actual print of the present image made for 洋子 Yohko has survived. After the 1976 Nikon Salon exhibition and the 1978 publication of 洋子 Yohko, the next opportunity for Fukase to present the image of the lone raven in prole came nearly a decade later for the travelling group exhibition Black Sun: The Eyes of Four, which showcased the work of four masters of Japanese post-war photography: Masahisa Fukase Eikoh Hosoe, Daido Moriyama and Shomei Tomatsu. Opening at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford in 1985, Black Sun subsequently travelled to four more venues and ended at Baltimore Museum of Art in 1988. For this exhibition, Fukase showed 21 works and made two print sizes: an oversized sheet size of approximately 111.8 x 157.5 cm (44 x 62 in.) and a smaller sheet size of approximately 36.8 x 49.5 cm (14 ½ x 19 ½ in.), which is the same sheet size as the present lot. In 1990, following the completion of the exhibition tour, the Philadelphia Museum of Art acquired all 21 of Fukase’s photographs, including a similar-sized print of the present image. The accompanying book, published by Aperture in 1986, also includes the present image, however, the current location of the set of prints made for the publication is unknown. In December 1986, Fukase published his seminal photobook 鴉 Ravens, cementing this powerfully evocative image of a lone raven in profile, which is bli