Taka Ishii Gallery Photography/Film is pleased to present ‘Soul and Soul, S Street Shuffle,’ a solo exhibition of works by Kiyoshi Suzuki. The exhibition will be Suzuki’s first solo exhibition at Taka Ishii Gallery and comprise 24 selected vintage prints from his first book Soul and Soul (1972) and S Street Shuffle (1988), which received the first Society of Photography Award.

The fortunate Islands: If we were to use our imaginations to attempt one final example of word play, we might say that Suzuki Kiyoshi’s book of photographs are liked a group of islands. Floating on the water’s surface, they reveal a distinct shape when viewed from afar, but approach them and look a little closer, and the ripples of their contours ceaselessly change. While Suzuki’s collections take the distinct shape of a book, they also seem to suggest that they are temporary aggregations. As we have seen, these photobooks resonate and form links with each other through a variety of channels. Due to the topography of the sea floor, islands might also be connected and there might be some islands that are unexpectedly isolated in a deep ocean trench. The ocean surrounds the island. This reminds us that another subject to which Suzuki was extremely partial was the water’s edge. And turning the pages in one of Suzuki Kiyoshi’s books of photography is the beginning of a journey to these islands.
 - Rei Masuda, ‘Journey to a photo book’ in Kiyoshi Suzuki: Hundred Steps and Thousand Stories
(National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 2010)

Machiel Botman, one of Netherland’s most important contemporary photographers, discovered Kiyoshi Suzuki’s photographs and brought them into the limelight. In 2008, Botman organized the exhibition ‘Kiyoshi Suzuki – Soul and Soul 1969–1999,’ which was shown at the Nooderlicht Photogallery in Groningen, Netherlands and traveled to Deichtor Hallen in Hamburg, Germany, in 2008 and 2009. The first large-scale retrospective of Suzuki’s works ‘Kiyoshi Suzuki: Hundred Steps and Thousand Stories’ was held at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo in 2010. That same year, Hakusuisha published a facsimile edition of Suzuki’s Soul and Soul. In conjunction with this exhibition, Taka Ishii Gallery Photography/Film will publish Soul and Soul, S Street Shuffle. We sincerely hope you will take this opportunity to view Kiyoshi Suzuki’s works, which take dreams, journeys, and literature as their themes and weave together an elaborate and multilayered world.

Courtesy of Taka Ishii Gallery