Reviews in Brief: Masahisa Fukase's "The Solitude of Ravens"

This is really an edited version of an essay I did a few years ago at Epinions, sparked by Fukase's book The Solitude of Ravens. It's worth reading, so check it out. For the short version, read on.

Masahisa Fukase (1934-2013) was a Japanese photographer who created a body of work that is sensuous, compelling, and emotionally challenging. His photographs of ravens began in 1975, on a train ride from Tokyo to Hokkaido after his divorce from his wife. Ravens and crows became Fukase’s overriding image, providing themes for five exhibitions between 1975 and 1984. The Solitude of Ravens (if you can find a copy) gives a good survey of his work from 1975-1978.

Not all of the images in this book are of ravens. It’s a “winter” book – darkness, snow, cold gray seas, a barrenness and spareness that surround and reinforce the central “journey” (this book is a journey, no doubt of it). While there is one sequence of a cat’s head, a nude woman, and a dead fish that, individually and together, state the idea of “round” with finesse and droll humor, the overriding thrust of this book is ravens. Fukase’s ravens are images of great power, sometimes overtly aggressive, sometimes remotely ominous, sometimes harrowing, and take on a mythic component that reaches into all of the meanings of “raven” in all cultures. This partly due to the folklore of ravens themselves, and partly due to Fukase’s treatment.

The photographs in this book don’t defy the Western idea of photographic modernism so much as ignore it. They seem much more akin to the work of William Klein, Robert Frank, or Bruce Davidson, but far, far darker, more on the edge. Fukase somehow manages to wring much more in the way of emotional impact out of similar, but more extreme, techniques. The images are dark, they are grainy, they are sometimes highly abstract and at others depressingly realistic. Dead ravens in the snow, ravens roosting at twilight, perched on temple gates, reflections from ravens’ eyes in the dark, combine with visions of snowstorms, deserted nighttime streets, a tramp wandering alone, fog on gray winter seas to present a picture of loss, loneliness, alone-ness. There are several remarkably beautiful images that provide no detail at all, merely shades of gray finally resolving into a landscape, like dreams of being lost in the wastelands.

It is unfortunate that this particular book is so unobtainable, although some of Fukase's images can be viewed online: there is a sequence of ten of Fukase’s images at Robert Mann Gallery’s website, and the biography at Steven Wirtz Gallery’s website has a series of unpublished works. And of course, you can always do an image search under the book title.