book with silver slip case
This is the 9th book Homma has created in homage to Ed Ruscha and his contributions to the field of artists' books. Specifically, this book is in homage to Ruscha's "Every Building on the Sunset Strip" (1966) which was also a leporello that used a similar design in order to show every building on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.
But there is more to this story. Photobook historians have noted the similarity of Ruscha's mapping of Sunset Strip with one in a 1954 pair of books published by the Japanese writer and artist Shohachi Kimura titled "Ginza Haccho", which is a book of photographs by Yoshikazu Suzuki that shows every building on Ginza Street in Tokyo in the same format as Homma's accordion. While Ruscha has demurred about revealing if he was aware of Suzuki's technique for recording both sides of this well-known street in Tokyo, others have also recorded this street in a similar manner. The most recent homage book, prior to Homma's, is Michalis Pilcher's "The Ginza Strip" (2018) that surveys Ginza street using the same technique with both of them adopting the same silver slip covers and formatting. One crucial difference however, is that Pilcher's photographs were taken during the day while Homma's were taken at night, thus inserting his own twist into this game of influence and appropriation one year after Pilcher's.
Pilcher's book can be found on this blog here:
53 pages, individually 7" x 5.5", and when unfolded 24ft 3.5"
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