Europe: Where Time Has Stopped by Ikko Narahara, First Edition

This is a first edition, first printing of the critically acclaimed photobook, “Europe: Where Time Has Stopped“ published by Kashima Kenkyujo Shupankan, Tokyo in 1967. Photoeye has provided an exceptional description of the importance of this book, “Like other members of the short-lived but highly influential Vivo agency, Narahara broke with dominant modes of documentary photography, which emphasized story telling, and pursued a more individual and subjective vision. In his famous essay "About My Method", he stated, "Even if a subjectivity abstracted from concreteness called human society is once again plunged into the reality of concrete human society of this land, it should not diminish its meaning as a document." A travelogue of sorts, Where Time Has Stopped records the photographer's travels in Europe from 1962-1965. The off-kilter, expressionist compositions bear the unmistakable mark of Klein, yet are entirely more stark and surreal. Rather than giving the viewer a sense of the photographer as plunged into the world, Narahara's compositions possess an uncanny sense of vertigo--of the camera as almost disembodied, floating through the scenes it observes. "More than once," Narahara has said, "I had the impression that the spirit of my photographs achieved a detachment and freedom of the soul close to nothingness: what is called Zen".

“Europe: Where Time Has Stopped” earned Ikko Narahara the Japan Photo Critics Association Photographer of the Year Award, The Mainichi Art Award, and the Minister of Education’s Award. The book is cited in Ryuichi Kaneko’s reference work on Japanese Photobooks, “Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 1970s”.

Measuring approximately 11.75” x 8” and containing 105 black and white and 30 color photographs including 5 gatefolds, the book is bound in blue cloth boards and housed in a photographically illustrated slipcase with acetate cover. Included in the book is the original publisher’s post card as issued. The book is in Near FINE+ condition with a very small crease to the corner of one of the gatefolds . The slipcase is in Near FINE condition with some wear to the corners and a small loss to the spine head of the acetate covering. This is a notoriously fragile title and is very rarely found in collectible condition. Overall, this is a superior copy of an influential photobook that is becoming increasingly scarce.

Photographs of the front and back of the slipcase as well as stock photographs from the book appear in the photo section of the listing.