Inspiring Books

When photographing an area for an extensive project it is important to not only look, but to read and get behind the images and scenes. To put yourself into the new aesthetic and understand and appreciate what you are creating. Over the course of my recent project, The Art of Mystery-Kyoto in its Season, I have read and studied the following books and anthologies:

The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
The Haiku Anthology, 3rd edition, edited by Cor Van Den Heuvel
The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima
The Essential Haiku, Versions of Basho, Buson and Issa, edited by Hass
Light Verse from the Floating World, Anthology of Japanese Senryu
Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf, Zen poems by Ryokan
Songs from a Bamboo Village by Shiki Mosaoka
Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
Palm of the Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata
The Classic Tradition of Haiku Anthology, edited by Faubion Bowers
The Spring of my Life and selected Haiku by Kobayashi Issa
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Haiku Handbook by William Higginson
A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro
In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki
Wabi-Sabi by Leonard Koren
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Love Poems from the Japanese
Back Roads to Far Towns by Basho
One hundred Poems from One hundred Poets
The Dancing Girl of Izu by Yasunari Kawabata
Haiku: A Poet’s Guide by Lee Gurga
The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery
Rashomon and other stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa