Badafoto by Daisuke Ichiba, 2012

A cult object from the darkest fringes of Tokyo’s underground art scene, Badafoto is a manic, fluorescent collision of photography, drawing, and grotesque figuration by Daisuke Ichiba—Japan’s high priest of "Badaism." Published in 2012 by French experimental press Le Dernier Cri, this slim, feral book fuses photocopied snapshots with hand-drawn violence, erotic hysteria, and surreal body horror, continuing Ichiba’s self-mythologised obsession with mothers, virgins, and psychic trauma.

Emerging from the same post-Dada anti-art lineage as Kei Nemoto, but with far less engagement in Japan’s mainstream or commercial circuits, Ichiba’s work has taken root more forcefully in Europe, where it is revered for its rawness and refusal of form. His world is populated by convulsive archetypes—naked boys, screaming women, maternal icons—rendered in ink, grain, and xerox flare. Badafoto may masquerade as a photobook, but it behaves more like a ritual: each page a spell, each image a wound.

Ichiba began self-publishing zines in the early 1990s, drawing from his own biography and a commitment to nonconformity. Badafoto is among the most distilled expressions of that ethos: screaming bodies, acidic overprint, zero compromise. In the Darwin archive, it sits as both artifact and warning—proof of what happens when photography and drawing are left to rot in a locked room together.

Technical Sheet
Title: Badafoto
Artist / Author: Daisuke Ichiba
Date: 2012
Technique / Printing Method: Offset / silkscreen hybrid
Medium / Materials: Softcover, saddle-stitched
Dimensions (cm): 21 × 15
Language: Japanese / French
Publisher / Editor: Le Dernier Cri
Condition: Very good