USSR 1991 [SIGNED]

Los Angeles: Little Big Man Books, 2012. First edition. Hardcover. Fine condition. Signed on label of inside cover. 165/450 as stated on printed label on inside front cover of portfolio. Unpaginated. Original rose paper covered boards with rose and with lettering debossed on cover, rose on spine. Textured gray endpapers. Housed in photo-illustrated cloth portfolio with black foam cushions.

Glasnost and Perestroika reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev made the Soviet society accessible to foreign media. Commissioned by Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper in 1990 Keizo Kitajima spent one year documenting the sprawling Soviet empire. Kitajima visited fifteen Soviet republics and he crossed eleven time zones in 1991 having been granted unparalleled access to people and places. He avoided to confirm the prevailing Western opinions of the USSR, whether it were the bread lines on one hand or the "happy laborers" of the known Soviet propaganda on the other.

Known for his high contrast b/w photography, USSR 1991 differs in as far as the photographs were taken with a Kodachrome slide film, producing a rather painterly account of his travels, capturing the Soviet society in a state of upheaval, including previously unimaginable images of protesters and dissidents. Laid in a string bound bound French-fold booklet containing a critical essay and eight three-page illustrated catalog entries with captions in English and Japanese bound in, printed to off-white paper, protected by two book-size black foam plates.