Each bookstore will act as a concierge, recommending "the book you should read now" to FASHION HEADLINE readers. Every Saturday, we will introduce books selected by Shelf (3-7-4 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo), a bookstore in Harajuku/Gaienmae that specializes in foreign books.




■ "Loops" Anders Edström

A collection of works by Swedish photographer and filmmaker Anders Edström.

This work unfolds a chronological narrative from cover to cover. He photographs while on walks, drives, and travels, constantly looking around and noticing things, stopping when the light and the scene come together. He seeks not spectacular or unusual scenes, but rather moments when the light and the scenery before him become one, as if guided by a mysterious force. While his images may seem ordinary, each one reveals the connections between light, time, and energy. In this book, puddles of reflective pigment emerge among these images. Each puddle he created at home to reflect light is a study in "light, form, and texture," to borrow the words of art historian Ernst Gombrich in his essay on 15th-century Alpine painting. They also serve as creative angles within this chronicle. Puddles also feature prominently in Vladimir Nabokov's dystopian novel "Bend Sinister," a prequel to his famous "Lolita." The novel's protagonist, recently widowed Adam Krug, first notices a puddle while gazing out a window. In heraldry, a "bend" refers to the band of a shield; a bend extending from the upper right to the lower left is typically called a bend dexter. A bend extending from the upper left to the lower right is called a bend sinister. The images reflected in the puddles are reversed and distorted, like Bend Sinister. Edström's puddles resemble ink blots, patterns, or footprints. Nabokov possessed a mysterious and unique sense of synesthesia that most people would envy. He could sense colors in sounds and taste light, and each word he wrote contained a hidden meaning. He played with words as well as sounds and images, "caressing" the details. He sought out what no one else noticed, and infused his stories with the sensations he captured with his unique intuition, unseen on the surface. Edström first made his name in the fashion world, where he was discovered by Martin Margiela, who rebelled against established fashion standards by simply smearing ordinary objects like boots, jeans, and backpacks with white paint. Like Margiela, Edström eschews the extraordinary, the surprising, and the conventional, instead leaning towards raw naturalism and expressing an alternative way of seeing the world through his synesthetic photography. This book serves as a time capsule of his research. --Jeff Rian
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