josef chladek

on photobooks and books

Renato D'Agostin - Tokyo Untitled, MC2 Gallery Edizioni, 2009, Milano

Hardcover, cloth bound, edition of 2000, signed. Design by Heartfelt Milan.

In TokyoUntitled D’Agostin isolates himself in the geometries of the Japanese city. He narrates his journey through his experience of the street, describing with the language of abstract images, charged of deep blacks and sharp edges. Dislocating subjects from their realities, D’Agostin depicts his perception of the space around him, the relationship between the city’s architecture and its people, and their interferences. This is emphasized in Tokyo, according to D’Agostin, where he has no reference or connection with the external world, and his sense of disconnection brings him to a discovery of the unseen.

“Tokyo Untitled” photographs bring me back to the destroyed Tokyo as it appeared right after the war ended. It may be totally impossible for young Renato to imagine that his “Tokyo Untitled” reminds me of such tragic images as Tokyo’s air raid attack which happened 64 years ago. (Eikoh Hosoe)

"These images are the thinnest possible slices of inconceivable urban density. Slices so thin that they must be measured in fractions of light, tiny microscopic moments of DNA in time taken from the huge archeology of a true metropolis." (Ralph Gibson)

More at Renato's site.

Pages: 88
Place: Milano
Year: 2009
Publisher: MC2 Gallery Edizioni
Size: 24 x 34 cm (approx.)