CELEBRATION OF LIFE, by Ikko Narahara

Camera Mainichi, 1972, First edition, 88 pp., 9 1/2" X 10 1/4", Softcover

Very good+ with the usual sunning to spine. 

"Music was only played at night so the most pleasurable thing to do in that tremendous heat was to go swimming, especially since we all swam in the nude. Being at the river, with all those people, laughing and naked in the water, made me think that we had returned to the time of an ancient mythology. Usually, when we look at each other in clothes we make evaluations but nakedness makes it difficult to distinguish people from each other. It makes everybody equal... My reason for going to this festival was not primarily to photograph, but simply to take part in the life of the country for a few days as a lover of rock and country music. In this book I have only focused on the everyday life of the participants. Taking the photographs made it possible for me to verify my own experience of the festival... somewhere in myself the part of me which is a photographer was also existing. But I did not want to destroy myself as a participant in order to take the pictures... This book was formed from a delicate balance of my act of living there as a participant and my taking photographs as an operation. I lived together with the people there and this book is a portrait of the time we shared."--Ikko Narahara, afterward.

"Narahara's document of a trip he and his wife took to the 'Celebration of Life' music festival in Louisiana in June of 1971. Full of stoned hippies and nude people rolling in the mud, the book is a wonderful, outsider's look at a by-gone era."--Photo-eye