Life As A Golden Half

A gold lamé bikini under a sparkling white vest, a tropical drink with an orchid on top, a stuffed deer head, a little girl holding a Hello Kitty sippy cup at the beach, shoe samples, power cables and many a downcast glance are some of the images collected in this sleek and sexy compendium. Last year, Tokyo's esteemed Powershovelbooks handed Golden Half cameras, cult old-school half-sized cameras that were recently re-released by the Japanese company SuperHeadz, to 11 half-Japanese female models--who took hundred of pictures of themselves, their friends, their homes, travels, daily landscapes and abstract worlds. The result is a vivid, radiant, sometimes ephemeral and gently erotic review of the lives of a group of carefree young women living between Tokyo and the countries of their second halves. But far from a frivolous collection of snapshots, this volume is a revealing compendium by some very promising new talents in Japanese photography.