松江泰治『gazetteerCC』       Book Design：秋山伸 + 和田悠馬 [edition.nord]      発行：赤々舎   Size： H275mm × W360mm   Page：280 pages   Binding：Hardcover   Limited 800, signed, edition numbered   Published in January 2023    ISBN：978-4-86541-163-8	¥ 13,000＋tax  国内送料無料！ 【国内／Domestic Shipping】  お支払い方法は、銀行振込、郵便振替、 クレジットカード支払い、PayPal、PayPay よりお選び頂けます。 【海外／International Shipping】 ＊ Please choose your area from the two below    　　　 Book + Asia shipping ¥19,350 JPY Book + World shipping ¥22,850JPY

gazetteerCC 

Matsue Taiji

"The photographs collected in this book were digitally scanned and digitally printed from color negatives, which Taiji Matsue shot using an analog process between 2000 and 2017.

The artist has actually been working in color for quite a long time in addition to his black-and-white photography. However, the nature of the analog color printing process is such that printing color negatives onto photographic paper blurs the "absolute focus" (to be explained below) that is most essential to Matsue's work, so he refrained from presenting these works and waited for advances in digital technology. In 2008, digital scanning and printing technology of sufficient quality became available, and Matsue made a major shift toward color which continues to this day.

While digital photography has long followed in the footsteps of film photography and attempted to mimic it, it has been considered a different kind of medium, with nonstraightforward imagery subject to manipulation and not serving as an index of reality, and this contextualization has been generally accepted. However, in recent years digital photographic technology has progressed far beyond the stage of imitations of negativebased analog photography, and is fundamentally transforming the nature of the medium.

Naturally, the concepts of framing, focus, cropping and so forth that were prerequisites for conventional photography are also being disrupted. Matsue's work not only anticipates these disruptions, but also responds to them.

The series in this photo book, CC and gazetteer, are not made up of aerial photographs.

They are landscapes shot from sites at high elevation, selected after careful research (on accessibility, daylight hours, angle of light, best shooting time), and as a rule -- as far as conditions on the ground permit -- are not bird's-eye views but direct head-on shots of the scenery. There are four conditions that must be met: clear skies, lighting from the front, head-on shots, and absolute focus. As a rule, photographs should be taken on a sunny day in good light, and in terms of angle, the subjects should be seen from the front. The all-over images, which do not use vertical but only horizontal positioning and have no visible horizon line, eliminate spatial and temporal depth that automatically emerges as the viewer's gaze moves along a vertical axis, block the viewer's gaze from wandering "beyond" the horizon, and rebuff the viewer's emotional investment in the image while bringing everything in it to the foreground. The viewer's attention is directed to the depth of the excessive, highresolution information packed into the image, rather than to spatial depth. This is what is meant by "absolute focus": the focus position that is not reliant on the naked eye, but absolute in terms of the lens, is the focal point, and the moment when all the light focuses into an image at the focal point is the moment when that light comes from an infinite distance. In other words, "absolute focus" is the focus that is achieved automatically based on the principles of the lens when a scene is shot with the focus adjusted to infinity, with the word "absolute" referring not to "completeness" from a human perspective but to the fact that it is not premised on the human gaze.［...]

This book, compiled with the addition of many previously unreleased works, consists of a total of 262 photographs numbered from 001 to 262, with "ALPS" (001) and "YOSEMITE" (262) as the entrance and exit, so to speak, and all the photographs arranged in pairs (even-numbered + odd-numbered). "ALPS," which opens the book, is a 2011 re-shooting of "ALPS 1996 #12" (1996), which also appears on the cover of Hysteric Matsue Taiji (2001), the completed form of the black-and-white series gazetteer, and Matsue photographed the same landscape again in 2018. It is what is known as a fixed-point observation of a landscape that has not changed over the past 20-odd years. YOSEMITE, which closes the book, shows the El Capitan peak photographed from Taft Point in Yosemite National Park. It is still the same landscape, but superimposed with photographic history and with a tribute to Carleton Watkins, a longtime inspiration to the artist.［...]

Matsue's photographs capture and contain all the information in a landscape, whether the photographer is looking at it or not. Regardless of whether or not we recognize it, everything in the world exists at any given time.

"Excess of photography" is not a reference to the world's inundation with an overabundance of photographs. It means that a human being cannot look at a photograph and see it all at once in its entirety. This is because when we see a photograph, the act of looking inevitably casts a shadow on it, inevitably generating an invisible blind spot. In capturing sweeping views of cities and nature from high above, Taiji Matsue's photographs remind us of the impossibility of a true panoramic view. By doing so, they open up photography to the wealth of details as yet unseen.

Extracted from the text "Excess of Photography"

 by Minoru Shimizu

(Art critic / Professor, Faculty of Global and Regional Studies, Doshisha University)

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Special Set Item

 

『gazetteerCC』＋『TAIJI MATSUE』     『TAIJI MATSUE』    発行：Ugeyan Co Ltd,     Size： H301mm × W378mm   Page：348 pages   Binding：Hardcover（aluminum, silver)   Limited 900(less stock), signed, editon numbered   Published in 2003    ISBN：4-9901746-0-7	¥ 40,000＋tax  国内送料無料！ 【国内／Domestic Shipping】  お支払い方法は、銀行振込、郵便振替、 クレジットカード支払い、PayPal、PayPay よりお選び頂けます。 【海外／International Shipping】 ＊ Please choose your area from the two below    　　　 Book + Asia shipping ¥48,700 JPY Book + World shipping ¥53,700 JPY

2003年に有限会社うげやんから刊行された『TAIJI MATSUE』(900部限定、残部僅少）は、松江泰治が地表を記録し始めた1989年から、木村伊兵衛賞受賞を経て、2002年までの代表作を含む集大成である。「地名」として収められた多様な表層は、敢えて均質な光のもとに撮影され、 砂漠の砂粒から大森林、未踏の地から街までが、その素材の全てをさらけだしている。

TARO NASU GALLERYプロデュースの元、特装本である表紙には、アルミアルマイトが用いられ、中身は、全頁裁ち切りのワイドな画面によって展開している。 オリジナルプリントの質感を可能な限り再現すべく CTP Screening および Fairdot 480という、当時最高レヴェルの高精細な印刷技術が投入され、パーフェクトを追求する松江のスタイルが細部にわたって反映された一冊です。

今回『gazetteerCC』の刊行を記念し、松江泰治の、刊行年代の異なる集大成2冊として、『gazetteerCC』（2023）＋『TAIJI MATSUE』（2003）を特別にセットでもお届け致します。

2冊共にサイン、エディションナンバー入。
※『gazetteerCC』と『TAIJI MATSUE』のエディションナンバーは異なるものになります。
※  セット特別販売価格として、通常、2冊で47,300円（税込）のところ、44,000円（税込）にてお求め頂けます。
※『TAIJI MATSUE』33,000円（税込）のみもご購入頂けます→

On the occasion of the publication of《gazetteerCC》, we will offer《gazetteerCC》+《TAIJI MATSUE》 as a set as two culminations of Taiji Matsue's work from different eras.

《TAIJI MATSUE》published by Ugeyan Co Ltd, in 2003, on Taiji Matsue's photography compiles every one of his masterpieces-from the time he began documenting the surface of the earth in 1989 all the way through to 2002, during which time he received the Kimura Ihee Photography Award. The various surfaces of the earth that are collected in the book as "place names" have been purposefully captured under a homogeneous light, thoroughly exposing the materials seen in the images: from the sand grains in a desert to a vast forest, from an untrodden piece of land to a city. 

In the book, supervision by TARO NASU GALLERY, has an aluminum cover, and the development of these chronologically-compiled works has been done through placing a photo on each side of a two-page spread, with all of the pages containing non-framed, wide-screen images. This book has also incorporated CTP Screening and Fairdot480, featuring most advanced resolution techniques at the time, with the intention of reproducing the closest quality possible to Matsue's original prints.
《TAIJI MATSUE》closely reflects Matsue's style that continuously pursues perfection.

Both titles are signed and edition numbered.
※ The edition numbers of  《gazetteerCC》 and  《TAIJI MATSUE》 are different from each.
※ The special price as a set sale.
※《TAIJI MATSUE 》only is also available→