masahisa fukase’s best known work was made while reeling from loss of love. after thirteen years of marriage, his wife yoko left him. while on a train returning to his hometown of hokkaido, perhaps feeling unlucky and ominous, fukase got off at stops and began to photograph something which in his culture and in others represents inauspicious feeling: ravens. he became obsessed with them, with their darkness and loneliness. his photographs capture them midflight; crouched in trees at dusk with glowing eyes; and singularly and spectacularly depressingly dead, in cold deep snow. in the forward to the book published of this work, akira hasegawa writes, “masahisa fukase’s work can be deemed to have reached its supreme height; it can also be said to have fallen to its greatest depth. the solitude revealed in this collection of images is sometimes so painful that we want to avert our eyes from it.

“Neil Krug’s stylized photos of his girlfriend [now wife], the model Joni Harbeck, were taken with Polaroid film years past its sell-by date. They have the kind of grainy, sun-scorched feel of a Sergio Leone spaghetti western. And ever since the couple began posting the photos on Flickr early this year, they’ve drawn a blaze of attention.” – The New York Times. Pulp – the multi-media collaboration between photographer Neil Krug and supermodel Joni Harbeck – has become a virtual sensation online, and is now the subject of the artists’ first monograph. ‘Pulp Art Book: Volume One’ is an LP-sized hardcover book, split into several vignettes ranging from a spaghetti western theme to a Bonnie and Clyde revival and to the struggles of a 1950s housewife. These series tell the story of each character, and will be expanded in subsequent volumes. The inspiration for the pulp theme comes from the artists’ collective appreciation of societal life and the artistic expressions of the 1960s and 70s. Old LP jackets, Giallo posters, vintage book covers, and B-movie cinema themes have defined their taste for this project. Initially they set out to capture something simple and sexy; as the shoots progressed, however, natural story lines emerged. The resulting work captures the smell of those decades and expresses them in a fresh way.”