赤穴 (Aka Ana) — Antoine d'Agata

赤穴 (Aka Ana) — Antoine d'Agata

This photobook by French photographer Antoine d’Agata, Aka Ana (Red Hole), published in 2017 by Akaaka Art Publishing, is part of the Darwin Bookshop because it enters the erotic and existential void with unrelenting intensity. Shot in Japan over years of immersion in Tokyo’s underworld, the book documents not a place but a descent—into sex, fever, narcotics, and photographic collapse.

D’Agata's work in Aka Ana fuses diaristic self-representation with performative and often collaborative acts of intimacy. Bodies blur, dissolve, burn under red light. The photographs are grainy, saturated, and immersive, often unreadable in a conventional sense—yet entirely legible in their physical and emotional charge. The cover itself is a veil: a naked figure partly obscured, with the title’s two kanji—赤 (red) and 穴 (hole)—cut directly into the surface like wounds or apertures.

This Japanese edition stands out for its production: heavy matte paper, rich inks, and the precise violence of the die-cut jacket. Signed by d’Agata in Arles, the book carries the trace of one of contemporary photography’s most transgressive presences. At Darwin, Aka Ana is held as a core work in the photobook canon of embodied experience and radical exposure—where sex is no longer subject but condition.

Technical Sheet

Title: 赤穴 (Aka Ana)
Artist / Author: Antoine d’Agata
Date: 2017
Technique / Printing Method: Offset printing, die-cut cover
Medium / Materials: Hardcover with printed dust jacket
Dimensions: approx. 22 × 28 cm
Language: Japanese, English, French
Pages: Unpaginated
Publisher / Editor: Akaaka Art Publishing
ISBN: 978-4-86541-079-0
Signed: Yes (signed in Arles)
Condition: MINT