Literature

Kawada [Kikuji] was one of the most influential Japanese photographers of the 1960s, and is maybe best known for his seminal book Chizu (The Map), which was designed as a printed requiem for the dead of Hiroshima. Published in 1965, twenty years after an atomic bomb destroyed the city, it has rightly become one of the most important and sought after photography books ever produced. It was republished in 2005 by Nazraeli Press.

This portrait, included in another of Kawada's books, Sacre Atavism (1971), was taken in Hamburg, Germany. It has a visceral quality that I look for in a street portrait. What makes it even more exceptional is that it is not posed. His acute eye, timing and printing style has kept Kawada at the forefront of Japanese photography, even though he no longer practises.

- Michael Hoppen, Finders Keepers, p.114