June Leaf: Japan 1970

Leaf's reproduced journal from her pivotal trip to Japan creates an impressionistic fusion of text and image.

This book is an intricate facsimile of a diary/sketchbook June Leaf filled during travels throughout Japan in 1970. Through sprawling drawings in pencil and ink, paintings, collages, and handwritten and typed thoughts, Leaf spontaneously captured her impressions on a journey both joyous and difficult, of pleasure and what she calls "that torture that occurs sometimes during travel." From real scenes like the view through the plane window approaching Japan, streetscapes, landscapes and a portrait of a passenger and conductor in a Hiroshima streetcar, to imagined visions including what she calls "scenes of paradise or Garden of Eden," image and text mingle like the accumulation of experiences over time. Following the approach to the facsimile of Leaf's Record 1974/75. Mabou Coal Mines published by Steidl in 2010, the paper and binding cloth of Japan 1970 closely match the originals, to transport us as deeply as possible into Leaf's intensively creative and self-reflective mind.

I look in my sketchbook… every time I look I see that I change. - June Leaf