Each bookstore will act as a concierge, recommending "must-read books" to FASHION HEADLINE readers. Every Thursday, each branch of the art bookstore "NADiff" will introduce a recommended book. This time, we'll be looking at NADiff du Champ in Ginza, Tokyo.

■ "The River Embraced Me" by Rinko Kawauchi

The Rinko Kawauchi photo exhibition "The River Embraced Me" was held at the Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, from January 23 to March 27, 2016. This book is the catalog for the exhibition. While the exhibition itself reconstructed Kawauchi's work over the past 18 years, the series titled "The River Embraced Me" is her latest work, shot in Kumamoto, where she has long been a photographer. The series invited members of the public to share memorable places and stories related to them, and Kawauchi then visited and photographed those locations. Kawauchi says she did not simply capture the fact that "this place is home to such past memories or someone's," but rather pressed the shutter when a resonance occurred in her own memory. The keywords for this series of works are "resonance" and "sharing." While no one can ever share the same experiences as another, we know that when we come into contact with the memories of others, something mysteriously resonates with our own. Furthermore, memories generally do not have a precise timeline; they are always accumulated unconsciously in fragments, and such resonance unexpectedly arises as we trace our own memories back. As you leaf through this book and imagine the memories of others, wondering, "What on earth happened here?" and "Who was thinking what?", you may find that the photographs before you evoke scenes from your own memory. Even if the memories do not overlap exactly, you experience sharing part of a stranger's memory. Kawauchi empathizes with the memories of someone somewhere in Kumamoto and shares some of them, and in these photographs she projects her own memories onto them. What resonates with the viewer in these photographs is up to each and every one of us.

The cover is also a spring-like color scheme with pale pink and green.

[Book information]
"The river embraced me"
Author: Kawauchi Rinko
Publisher: torch press
Hardcover / A4 format / 12 pages of insert text included
Price: 2,800 yen