Half Awake and Half Asleep in the Water.

Half Awake and Half Asleep in the Water. Photographs by Asako Narahashi. Introduction by Martin Parr. Nazraeli Press, Tucson, 2007. 80 pp., 59 four-color plates., 12x13".

Publisher's Description:

"Half Awake and Half Asleep in the Water is the second title in the "Parr/Nazraeli Edition of Ten," and the first monograph on the work of Asako Narahashi. This series has been exhibited in Japan to wide acclaim, but never published in book form until now. The photographs were made while the artist stood chest-deep in the ocean facing the shoreline; through them, she manages to extract the viewer's mind from its surroundings, and one finally succumbs to the hallucinatory power of the ocean. In the words of esteemed photographic historian Kotaro Iizawa, "the feeling of being stranded, however, is strangely comforting." "