WATERFALL RAPTURE: POSTCARDS OF FALLING WATER, MY ADDICTION, MY COLLECTION, MY EDITION

Tokyo, Japan: Shinchosha Company Publishers, 1996. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. As New/As New Dust Jacket.. Tokyo, Japan: Shinchosha Company Publishers, 1996. Hardcover. As New/As New. First Edition/First Printing. 288 pages. Artist Book. One of the greatest art photography books of the 20th century. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now rare. A brilliant production by Tadanori Yokoo: Oversize-volume format. Red hard boards with black titles on spine, as issued. Postcards collected, photographed, and assembled by Tadanori Yokoo. Essay by Hiroshi Aramata appended at the end. Oversize blue obi-band intact and wrapped around the book. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper in Tokyo, Japan to the highest standards. In pictorial DJ with colorful titles and design on the cover and spine, as issued. Presents Tadanori Yokoo's "Waterfall Rapture". The single greatest Artist Book on what collecting really means. The art of the postcard and its intimate relation to photography, graphic design, and collecting are evoked by Yokoo's single-minded obsession, religious zeal, and spiritual devotion: "Waterfall Rapture" utilizes the "multiplier effect" to celebrate and capture in book form the rapturous experience called collecting. Every postcard is a reproduction of a photograph (particularly the photograph of a painting or work of art). Each of the postcards in his massive collection was re-photographed by Yokoo to create his book. These photographs appear as miniature reproductions in the book, that is, as photographs of photographs of photographs of photographs. The exhilarating result is a book that is one-of-a-kind, which is every collector's dream object, and the postcard, photography, graphic design, and collecting finally come full circle: My addiction, my collection, my edition. Why does a human being become a collector? According to Susan Sontag (in "On Photography"), this "pathos of avidity" is our uniquely modern way of understanding the world - and ourselves ("I collect, therefore I am"). According to Tadanori Yokoo, it is because: "A collection is deviation from the system. A collection is the unification of life and art. A collection is the discipline of intuition. A collection transforms quantity into quality" (Tadanori Yokoo). An absolute "must-have" title for Tadanori Yokoo collectors. This copy is very boldly and beautifully signed (in Japanese kanji characters) in black pen-marker by Tadanori Yokoo. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a great Artist Book. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: The oversize blue obi-band, often missing in many copies, is intact. A rare signed copy thus. 13000 color plates. Tadanori Yokoo's "Waterfall Rapture" was selected as one of the greatest photography books in "The Photobook". The greatest graphic designer of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER TADANORI YOKOO TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 4104110019.