Why Dresden - Photographs 1984/85 & 2015 by Seiichi Furuya

A collection of works by Japanese photographer Seiichi Furuya.

The book, which is made up of photographs taken by the Furuya family during their stay in Dresden in 1984, is a unique document by a Japanese photographer documenting daily life in the last days of the German Democratic Republic, commonly known as East Germany. Since the early 1980s, Furuya has been highly regarded in the Austrian photography world. Having come to Dresden in eastern Germany as an interpreter for a Japanese construction company, his photographs document intimate scenes of the young Furuya family, deep-rooted anxieties and happy moments, as well as daily life and society. In 2015, Furuya returned to Dresden for the first time in 30 years to hold an exhibition, and created a new series on the theme of familiar places that have been imprinted with capitalist lifestyles over the years, and the PEGIDA* demonstrations that completely changed the image of Dresden. Furuya was reluctant to publish the book because he did not want to delve further into the world of "Memoirs". However, he was persuaded by the enthusiasm of the director of the Dresden Museum of Art, and the book was published on the condition that Furuya would not be involved in any way. As a result, it has a different nature to the collections that Furuya has produced independently up to now, but it is a collection that displays the characteristic of Furuya's photographs, and of photography in general, of simultaneously capturing the social and individual aspects as documents.

*European Patriots Against the Islamization of the West

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Title: Why Dresden - Photographs 1984/85 & 2015
Artist: Seiichi Furuya
Spector Books, 2017
Softcover with dust jacket, Otabind
240 x 182 x 14 mm
191 pages
Text in English
First edition (English edition)
ISBN: 978-3-95905-128-6
¥4,500 + tax