Heads up to all photo book collectors:

Aperture is reissuing a limited edition of Barakei, as well as the next two books to our popular Curated Collection, available exclusively online.

In 1963, controversial author Yukio Mishima and photographer Eikoh Hosoe put the finishing touches on their masterful collaboration Barakei (Killed by Roses), part photographic performance, part surreal portrait of Mishima as both iconoclast and self-mythologist. The original edition, designed by Kohei Sugiura, famously established the touchstone for two subsequent editions in 1971 and 1985.Aperture is delighted to reissue this faithfully reproduced facsimile of the 1963 classic, making available once again one of the most infamous and intriguing photo books of the twentieth century. This edition is exquisitely produced by the Japanese art shop NADiff, in close consultation with Eikoh Hosoe.

This reissue of Barakei is published in a limited edition of five hundred copies so get yours while they last!

Aperture Curated Collection:

The Chance is Higher, Photographs by Ari Marcopoulos is a thoughtfully designed volume produced by David Strettell–aka Dashwood Books, who understands the careful attention it takes to create a book that honestly reflects the sensibility of the artist. The texture and ambience of this publication is rough, raw, and supremely gorgeous. As David describes it, the pages “are not Xeroxes themselves but beautiful reproductions of them. An artist’s book that seamlessly combines photographs of Marcopoulos’s family, skate pictures, graffiti, landscape and portraiture. Ari feels it is his best book to date and I am very proud of how it came out. Working together with the designer Gilles Gavillet, we were looking to produce something that felt very fine but with a punk/street sensibility.  It was pretty dangerous territory but I feel we really pulled it off.”

Oliver Sieber has photographed a variety of pop-cultural niches over the years—from Teds in Germany to Rockabilly fans in Japan. In Character Thieves, Sieber has focused on European manifestations of the “Cosplay” subculture, where participants dress up in costumes—and live part of their lives—as characters from Japanese video games, animated films, and graphic novels. This volume was produced by Böhm/Kobayashi Publishers in collaboration with one of our favorite German independent publishers and booksellers, Markus Schaden.