Face To Face by Seiichi Furuya & Christine Gössler

A collection of works by Japanese photographer Seiichi Furuya and his wife, Christine Gössler.

"I realized that no matter how many times I tried, I couldn't understand anything." In 2010, Furuya literally put a period to the "Mémoires" series, which he had been working on for nearly 20 years. However, just before the “Last Memoire” exhibition, Furuya suffered a stroke and was unable to even visit the venue. Therefore, as the final chapter of "Last Memoire", I decided to knit "Mémoires" centered on Christine as an artist.

In 2018, Furuya began organizing Christine's belongings, which had been left in the attic for decades. In the process of discovering various materials there, Furuya was photographing his best-known portrait of Christine, taken on the coast of his hometown of Nishi-Izu, when she was behind a tripod. I found a slide film of Furuya standing. At that time, Furuya was so excited that he muttered "Face to Face...". Further research revealed that Christine continued to photograph each other until the day before she took her own life in October 1985.

"Face to Face" began with a photograph of Christine taken on February 28, 1978 at the apartment in Graz where Furuya was living at the time. The curtain closes with a photograph taken on October 6, 1985 of Komyo and himself against the backdrop of the Cecilienhof Palace, the site of the "Potsdam Conference" where the post-war process of World War II was discussed. All but one of the 150 photographs in this book were taken of each other by Christine and Furuya. For Furuya, the act of photographing Christine was not for the purpose of making a print as a work, but the act itself was mysteriously a silent dialogue. With this photo book, Furuya marks the end of "Mémoires," which he spent his entire life working on.

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Title: Face to Face
Artist: Seiichi Furuya
Chose Commune, 2020
Hardcover, perfect binding
255 x 206 x 19 mm
168 pages
Text in English and French
First edition
ISBN: 979-10-96383-19-1