To Tell My Real Intentions, I Want To Eat Only Haze Like a Hermit - Katherine Longly

In photographs, interviews, emails, graphics, and illustrations, Belgian artist Katherine Longly investigates the Japanese relationship with food and the body in Japan.
During several residencies in Japan, Longly met and spoke with ten people of different ages and backgrounds about their experiences with food and weight. Each of the book's ten chapters takes a different approach - 34-year-old Martijn, for example, talks about the easy availability of snacks and sweets, highlighted by photos taken in bakeries, conbinis and supermarkets; other chapters focus more on the body or, in the case of anorexia survivor Marina, opt for abstract images and focus on her words.
At the intersection of art and anthropology, this project invites everyone to dig to discover where their relationship to food and their body is rooted.
The book includes a "research notebook" filled with additional notes and correspondence, as well as an afterword by cultural anthropologist Maho Isono.

“Our relationship with food is complex. It can reveal itself as a formidable tool for managing our emotions, and it’s also a privileged witness to our social and family history. And it’s fundamentally inseparable from the relationship we have with our own bodies. Between control and pleasure, my connection to food is still haunted by the ghost of a little girl who was a little too round. The image of the self finds its foundations in childhood – with all its strength and tenacity.

I set out to explore where our relationship with food is rooted, outside of my own experience. Collecting statements from a place far from my own references allowed me to understand my own story, with a necessary step back.”
― Katherine Longly’s foreword

first edition

signed copies available.

stock number: NB747