Nadia
Gallery hours:11:00-19:00
Closed on Monday,Tuesday
Akio Nagasawa Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Hajime Sawatari’s exhibition “Nadia”.
Sawatari fell in love with the Italian fashion model Nadia while working with her on an advertisement back in 1971. Driven by the photographer’s desire to capture on film everything about the person he loved, Sawatari took the model with him on an extensive journey. Traveling around Karuizawa in the summer, Venice and other locations in Nadia’s home country, Karuizawa in the Winter, and Tokyo, his focus on Nadia switched between viewing her as a photographic subject and a lover, resulting in a photographic story of mysterious beauty blending aspects of reality and fiction. Through “Nadia”, Sawatari established his own unique semi-fictional style of “capturing a woman in a back-and-forth between reality and fiction,” which marked a clear departure from his previous female portraits, and opened a new frontier in the realm of photography.
“Nadia” eventually became known as a series that is being referred to as a leading work of postwar Japanese photography still today, and that represents the photographic oeuvre of Hajime Sawatari.
For this exhibition, Sawatari looked through his negatives of the “Nadia” series once again, and selected those he felt like preserving for posterity from a contemporary point of view. As this selection includes numerous previously unpublished shots, this exhibition presents “Nadia” in a new light quite different from the established image.
We are looking forward to your visit to the exhibition, and at this occasion, would like to recommend also the newly compiled photo books Nadia b/w and Nadia color. Both include previously unseen shots, and are published concurrently with the exhibition in signed and numbered limited editions of 600 each.
Artist
Hajime SAWATARI
沢渡朔
Born 1940 in Tokyo. Began to publish his works in photography magazines and elsewhere while still enrolled at the Department of Photography, College of Art, Nihon University. After working for Nippon Design Center, he became a freelance photographer in 1966. While working mainly as a fashion photographer, he has been publishing his works in numerous magazines such as Camera Mainichi. He produced a large number of masterful works including Alice, inspired by Alice in Wonderland, and Nadia, containing photos of an Italian fashion model (both 1973), and has since been continuously operating in the front lines of his field. Photo books include Nadia: Forest Sprite, Alice (both 1973), Taste of Honey ('90), 60's and 60's 2 (2001), and kinky ('09) and Nadia('16).
Publication
Nadia b/w & color 2vol. set
Nadia, oh Nadia
Where are you?
In the wonderlands of this world,
you are always near my heart,
and there you lie asleep even now
From time to time you talk in your sleep,
“Wasn’t the camera good back then!”
– Kazuko Shiraishi wrote the poetry for this book.
Long out of print and frequently selected for "best of photography books", we present a new edition of this work which has rightfully become a legend of its genre.
The two types of publication; b&w (black & white) and color books are published simultaneously.
This new edition of Nadia, to include a lot of unpublished works.
Nadia b/w
Nadia, oh Nadia
Where are you?
In the wonderlands of this world,
you are always near my heart,
and there you lie asleep even now
From time to time you talk in your sleep,
“Wasn’t the camera good back then!”
– Kazuko Shiraishi wrote the poetry for this book.
Long out of print and frequently selected for "best of photography books", we present a new edition of this work which has rightfully become a legend of its genre.
The two types of publication; b&w (black & white) and color books are published simultaneously.
This new edition of Nadia, to include a lot of unpublished works.
Nadia color
Nadia, oh Nadia
Where are you?
In the wonderlands of this world,
you are always near my heart,
and there you lie asleep even now
From time to time you talk in your sleep,
“Wasn’t the camera good back then!”
– Kazuko Shiraishi wrote the poetry for this book.
Long out of print and frequently selected for "best of photography books", we present a new edition of this work which has rightfully become a legend of its genre.
The two types of publication; b&w (black & white) and color books are published simultaneously.
This new edition of Nadia, to include a lot of unpublished works.
Kinky
Works by Hajime Sawatari in which the photographer captures model Hiroko Arahari as he meets her for the first time, falls in love with her and finally marries her. These photographs that retain the flavor of the 60s are simultaneously a documentation of a love between two individuals and a collaboration between two artists in which reality and imagination merge to create a unique world.
- There is a small split on the back of the cover due to deterioration over time.