And the first book I purchased by a foreign photographer, in 1967 or ’68, was William Klein’s New York. The first Japanese photobook I ever purchased was Otoko to onna by Eikoh Hosoe.
Since I couldn’t make images, I thought intensely about what I could do that would connect me with the world of photography, and started to just consume and absorb whatever materials I could get my hands on. My father was an amateur photographer, and after the war he worked as an editor at a fashion magazine, which influenced me too, with all the exposure to material it provided. Ryuichi Kaneko: It started in high school and university, when I was taking photographs and realized I possessed absolutely no talent for it. Ivan Vartanian: You began collecting books at a time when no one else had interest in Japanese photobooks. This article also appeared in Issue 6 of the Aperture Photography App: click here to read more and download the app.
Ivan Vartanian, who guest edited the latest issue of The PhotoBook Review, spoke to him about how he became one of the first and most enduring champions of the Japanese photobook, the evolution of the form, and what makes a book irresistible. As a scholar, Kaneko has been an important figure in supporting and extending scholarship surrounding Japanese photography and photobooks. In his role as curator at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, from its nascency up until this year, he oversaw the development of the institution’s public collection. Ryuichi Kaneko is a leading historian of Japanese photobooks, and over the course of four decades he has amassed a formidable collection of twenty thousand volumes, including magazines and catalogues. Ryuichi Kaneko interviewed by Ivan Vartanian
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