Masahisa Fukase

 

Masahisa Fukase's latest publication, published by Atelier EXB, is dedicated to his emblematic series Sasuke!! My Dear Cat. The photographic survey combines his iconic and previously unpublished photographs of his two feline companions: Sasuke and Momoe.

 

Growing up in a family of photographers, when in 1977 Fukase took in Sasuke it was only natural for him to begin documenting their adventures together. Named after the fictional ninja Sarutobi Sasuke, Fukase brought the cat everywhere from the countryside to the zoo, photographing his every move. A year later, Fukase took on a second kitten and named her Momoe, after the Japanese Peach Festival: Momo no Sekku. Projecting himself onto his adoration for the two cats, Fukase's photographs are a boundless experimental field that led to an extraordinary body of work in its technical and visual inventiveness. As often in his work, this series shows a form of projection of the photographer into his subject. The cat, a faithful companion who never leaves him, takes the place of his wife, eternal heartache, later represented by the iconic fleeing crows.

 

His cats have been the subject of several books in his lifetime and Tomo Kosuga has dug into the photographer’s archives to conceive this ultimate book as the achievement of a series of publications devoted to his cats.

 

Text by Masahisa Fukase (essay from 1978) and Tomo Kosuga, Director of the Masahisa Fukase Archives.