We Have No Place to Be (signed)
Joji Hashiguchi

Title:  We Have No Place to Be
Author: Joji Hashiguchi
Publisher: Session Press
Edition:  1st softcover printing, 2020
ISBN: 9780578429083

Condition:  Like New – Signed

Available here in a newly edited and expanded edition, We Have No Place to Be (originally published by Soshisha in 1982) veritably launched Hashiguchi’s illustrious 40-year career, and remains widely regarded as one of the photographer’s seminal early works alongside his first photobook Shisen ( The Look, recipient of the 18th Taiyo Prize in 1981). Supervised and edited by Hashiguchi himself, this omnibus edition comprises 139 black and white photographs, including more than 30 previously unpublished images. Printed in duotone with a matte finish, ”We Have No Place to Be: 1980-1982” provides a visceral window back into the eminently topical world featured within its 256 pages. Recalling long high school nights spent listening to the Beatles, Hashiguchi first landed on the streets of Liverpool and London. Having encountered Christiane F.’s sensational 1978 autobiography, Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (We Children From Zoo Station), he made his way from England to West Germany, traveling through Nuremberg and West Berlin. A budding Beatnik, he forayed even further West, at last arriving in New York. Over the course of his journey through these five cities, he sought to depict each through the youths that populated their streets. Nearly four decades out, Hashiguchi’s We Have No Place to Be: 1980-1982 challenges present-day viewers to reexamine what we have both become and lost. Above all, Hashiguchi’s photos evince a preternatural ability to capture street youths in an unmediated, unguarded, intimate state. Eschewing a forced approach, As Hashiguchi reminisces, “I suspect their willingness to be photographed was in large part due to the simple fact that I was Asian.”