Ravens — Masahisa Fukase, MACK 2017 Edition

Few photobooks are as mythic, obsessive, or terminal as Masahisa Fukase’s Ravens. First published in 1986 and reissued here by MACK with a newly commissioned essay by Tomo Kosuga, this bilingual edition restores the intensity and context of a body of work long considered among the most important in photographic history. Shot between 1975 and 1986 in the wake of Fukase’s divorce, Ravens unfolds across the coastal darkness of Hokkaido, where flocks of crows—blurred, glinting, feral—become allegories of loss, madness, and solitary vision. It began, reportedly, with a mournful train ride. What followed was not just a document of existential isolation but a collapse of the boundary between author and subject: Fukase became the raven, as Kosuga writes, “frozen by his camera and immortalized on the cover of his most famous book.” The 2017 edition re-situates the work inside Fukase’s biography—his collapse in 1992, his two-decade coma, and his posthumous canonisation—while reproducing the images with a quiet, undiminished violence. This is not just a photobook; it is an afterlife in pages.

Technical Sheet
Title: Ravens
Artist / Author: Masahisa Fukase
Date: Originally 1986, this edition 2017
Edition: MACK facsimile with new material
Technique / Printing Method: Offset
Medium / Materials: Hardcover with slipcase
Dimensions (cm): Approx. 24 × 26
Language: English, Japanese
Pages: [Please confirm]
Publisher / Editor: MACK
ISBN: 978-1-910164-83-9
Condition: NEW