Breathless

Breathless by Tsubasa Kawakuchi is a hauntingly atmospheric debut photobook that drifts between memory, adolescence, and the emotional landscape of summer in rural Japan. Shot with a broken camera that casts a faint magenta tint across the images, the work transforms ordinary scenes into fragments suspended between nostalgia, desire, and uncertainty.

Riverbanks, empty schoolyards, flower fields, cicadas, and overgrown paths appear throughout the book not as documentary observations, but as emotional traces. Kawakuchi photographs these spaces with an almost dreamlike sensitivity, allowing the imperfections of the camera to soften reality into something fragile and psychologically charged. The result is a visual world that feels both deeply personal and collectively familiar, evoking the lingering atmosphere of a Japanese summer remembered through emotion rather than chronology.

What makes Breathless especially compelling is its sense of emotional ambiguity. Beneath the quiet beauty of the photographs lies a tension between movement and hesitation, longing and restraint. The work never fully explains itself, instead allowing viewers to drift through fleeting sensations, memories, and unresolved emotions much like the experience of recalling youth itself.

Kawakuchi’s images resonate with the cinematic intimacy often associated with Japanese photography, where atmosphere becomes narrative and silence carries emotional weight. The subtle magenta cast throughout the series further deepens this sensation, turning the photographs into something that feels half-remembered, like a memory dissolving under summer heat.

Winner of the 2nd Fugensha Photo Award Grand Prix, Breathless marks an impressive debut from a photographer attentive to the emotional possibilities of image-making. For readers interested in contemporary Japanese photography, memory-driven narratives, and photobooks rooted in mood and sensation, this is a quietly unforgettable publication.

《Breathless》是日本攝影師川口翼（Tsubasa Kawakuchi）的首本攝影書，也是一部充滿夏日記憶與青春情緒的影像作品。攝影師偶然使用了一台帶有洋紅色偏移的故障相機，讓整個系列籠罩在一種曖昧、懷舊而近乎夢境般的氛圍之中。

河岸、蟬鳴、空蕩的校園、花田與鄉間景色，在他的鏡頭下不只是風景，而更像是情緒與記憶的殘影。作品並不追求清晰敘事，而是透過光線、色調與空氣感，捕捉青春裡那些難以言說的不安、悸動與遲疑。

《Breathless》最迷人的地方，在於它保留了情感的模糊性。觀者像是在翻閱一段逐漸褪色的夏日回憶，既熟悉又遙遠。對於喜歡日本攝影、氛圍敘事與帶有電影感影像的讀者而言，這是一部值得細細閱讀與收藏的作品。

+++
Language: English & Japanese
Binding: Softcover | 152 pages
Dimension: 267 × 210 mm | 708g
Publication Year: June 2023
ISBN: 978-4-908955-22-8