The solitude of ravens
The British Journal of Photography has named Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase’s 1986 Karasu (Ravens) as the best photobook of the past 25 years*. According to the BJP:
The book is a mournful reflection on Fukase’s past relationship, but has also been interpreted as an allegorical critique of modern industrialised society.
Through dark, grainy images of karasu, Fukase chronicles a lonesome trip to his hometown in Hokkaido in the late 70s while deep in the throes of divorce from his wife/former muse.
Fukase is said to have first become engrossed by the brooding karasu as he sat aboard the train from Tokyo, not knowing his collection would one day be hailed an obscure masterpiece by British critics. Despite three sold-out editions and a revised, slightly more impressionistic name (The Solitude of Ravens), Fukase’s work has remained largely unknown until this recent accolade.
Karasu are plentiful in Japan, particularly in the cities where special anti-karasu nets are used to protect domestic rubbish from being strewn about the streets. In Japanese mythology, they are said to represent foreboding and dangerous times ahead. I had always translated the word karasu as simply crow, rather than the more mysterious raven, but the Japanese word can apparently mean both black birds. It will take someone far more ornithological than me to know which is actually represented in Fukase’s book.
On a melancholy note**, Fukase has remained in a coma since the early 1990s. He is said to have fallen down stairs while drunk, which merely adds another level of sadness and solitude to his work.
*The Guardian subeditors may have been skeptical about the BJP’s choice of Kurasu. Their article by Sean O’Hagan, Masahisa Fukase’s Raavens: the best photobook of the past 25 years? is a pretty clear example of poorly-chosen punctuation, considering the overall positive tone of the piece.
**On a totally geeky linguistic note, did you know the collective noun for ravens is an unkindness? I did not, until I heard The Unkindness of Ravens, a cool little London two-piece who tend to hang out in Camden.
Images from The Guardian and Mass Observer.
