Size： H245mm × W255mm　
Page：248 pages
Binding：Hardcover
Contents
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7 Days
41 SELF AND OTHERS
109 SPIRITUAL TRAVELS
133 FAMILIAR STREET SCENES
189 Memories of Water
209 Childhood
217 Essay and References
Chronology
List of Works
Acknowledgements
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Gocho was born in 1946 in Kamo-shi, Niigata Prefecture. After graduating from high school, he went on to Kuwasawa Design School in Tokyo where he encountered the photograph, the tool that was to be his means of artistic expression for his entire life. Gocho lived in Japan from the period of rapid economic growth until just before the onset of the bubble economy.
In relating Gocho's life, I must inevitably mention the physical handicap that was the cause of his premature death from heart failure in 1983. When he was 3 years old, he was diagnosed with caries of the thoracic vertebrae and the attending physician expressed doubt that he would live to the age of 20. For Gocho, it must have required a certain amount of determination to move to Tokyo alone and pursue photography in light of the physical effort required to take and develop photographs.
We see from Gocho's notebooks written at the time, that in 《SELF AND OTHERS》 he was also attempting to approach elements of "death." In the end, photographs dealing with "death" were not included, but you could say there was something close to it in the photograph of a young girl with eyes closed sprawled out on a bed in a stark white room, or the last photograph in S&O.
The last photograph in S&O is also on the cover of the photobook. It was taken at a firework display for an Independence Day celebration held at the U.S. Army's Camp Zama or perhaps on the day of the Bon Festival Dance. Looking only at the photograph, the location seems to be intentionally obscured. In an expanse of fog, children are running away and other children are running toward them. One may imagine that just before direct contact with "others" the child's ego or self has not yet coalesced and is still in a state of chaos. Gocho's placement of this image on the photobook cover indicates both looking forward to and being uneasy about the journey of encountering "others" about to begin.
And the children who have crossed over the white line seem to be living in a world entirely separate from this one. Undoubtedly, if we go back to the stage before the self is formed in encounters with others, we eventually arrive at the world on the other side before "life" appears.
What is impressive is that Gocho's portrayal of this is never tragic. On the contrary, what is there before everything begins is chaos filled with possibilities. This vision of life and death would surely have been carried over to his concept for Old Age that was to follow.［...]
Looking back over Gocho's works, they feel to be a trial-and-error attempt to perceive the dynamics of borders or "edges" that exist between two things. For example, the "edges" of contact between two cultures or two eras. The "edge" that arises from two people encountering each other, the "edges" confronted by young people living in the city. The photographic works Gocho left show that the experience of various "edges" can be discovered in sudden random facial expressions and gestures.
Re-evaluation of Gocho's works began at the end of the 1980s and still continues today. Re-evaluation did not end with a one-time look certainly due to Gocho's personal story but also to the fact that the allusions to various social phenomena and "edges" portrayed in his works deeply resonate with people at the core of their being.
AKAAKA Art Publishing
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