Mono no Aware: The Poignancy of Things is a limited-edition large-format photography book in which Australian photographer Brett Boardman pairs images of Kyoto's 17th-century imperial villa Katsura Rikyū with photographs of a makeshift shelter beneath a nearby bridge, taken within two hours of each other.
About This Book
Few architectural pairings are as quietly unsettling as the one at the centre of this book. Katsura Rikyū — among the most studied examples of imperial Japanese architecture, famously rediscovered by Bruno Taut and later examined by Kenzō Tange, Walter Gropius, and photographer Ishimoto Yasuhiro — is here set against a transient shelter that, by Boardman's account, more honestly expresses the original villa's aspiration toward simplicity. The resulting 42 paired photographs resist easy categorisation, functioning simultaneously as architectural photography, documentary work, and social commentary. The volume extends a century-long dialogue between Katsura Rikyū as a built place, Japan as a cultural context, and the Western architectural gaze. Introduced by novelist and essayist Pico Iyer, it is an edition of 200 copies, each including a pair of signed and numbered prints.
Key Features
- 96 pages of 42 paired photographic sets documenting Katsura Rikyū and an adjacent makeshift shelter in Kyoto
- Introduction entitled "Sunlight and Shade in Katsura" by essayist and novelist Pico Iyer; design by Mark Gowing
- Limited edition of 200 copies, each including one pair of signed and numbered prints
- Published by Uro Publications, 2015
What You'll Discover
- How two structures separated by centuries of intent — an imperial villa and a temporary shelter — echo each other in their articulation of human desires for order, tranquility, and dignity
- The photographic traditions that inform Boardman's approach: Ishimoto Yasuhiro's classic architectural images of Katsura and Ryuji Miyamoto's documentary study of homelessness in Cardboard Houses
- The intellectual lineage of Katsura Rikyū in the East-West architectural dialogue, from Bruno Taut's 1930s rediscovery through to Tange and Gropius's seminal Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture
- Buddhist concepts of zazen and koan as frameworks for engaging with architecture — the suspension of judgement as a mode of spatial understanding
About the Author
Brett Boardman is an Australian photographer whose practice engages with architecture, space, and the built environment. The images in this volume were made in Kyoto in 2011, emerging from what Boardman describes as a spontaneous response to direct experience rather than a predetermined documentary brief.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover (Japanese silk bound, with blue tarpaulin bookslip)
- Pages: 96
- Dimensions: 390mm x 267mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780987228192
- Publisher: Uro Publications
- Publication Date: 2015
Perfect For: Collectors of limited-edition photography publications; architects and designers with an interest in Japanese spatial philosophy; those engaged with the intersection of architectural photography, documentary practice, and cross-cultural architectural history.