Image: The Photographers' Gallery, An Un.titled Site
The Photographers’ Gallery Bookshop is highlighting 'Silence and Image', Mariko Takeuchi’s bilingual collection of essays on Japanese photography. Published by Akaaka Art Publishing, the 2026 volume gathers critical texts that examine the work of 11 Japanese photographers and is described by the bookshop as available in Japanese and English. The publication arrives alongside the gallery’s wider focus on Japanese women photographers this summer, though the book itself is presented as a bookshop title rather than as an exhibition catalogue.
According to the bookshop, Takeuchi is a Japanese photography critic and associate professor of Kyoto University of Art and Design. 'Silence and Image' brings together essays translated into English and illustrated with images that the shop says serve as “portals to the text.” The book’s contents address questions of looking, proximity, suffering and gender, with the publisher’s description framing the essays around what it means to look at photographs and what it means to draw near to people in pain.
The volume ranges across a wide field of photographers, including Ken Domon, Lieko Shiga and Risaku Suzuki. The table of contents listed by the bookshop also names Ryudai Takano, Ryuichiro Suzuki, Maki Umaba, Bishin Jumonji, Ryo Suzuki, Osamu James Nakagawa, Takashi Arai, Eriko Koga and Osamu Hiraki, with one section, 'Notes for Rwanda', noted as being in Japanese only. The collection’s subtitle on the bookshop site is 'Essays on Japanese Photographers'.
Takeuchi’s study is part of a broader set of Japanese photobooks and related titles being carried by the gallery’s bookshop. The same newsletter announcing the title also points readers to restocks and new arrivals linked to 'Japanese Women Photographers', the major exhibition now on view at The Photographers’ Gallery from 24 June to 27 September 2026. That exhibition is curated by Lesley A. Martin, Takeuchi Mariko and Pauline Vermare, and is organised by Aperture in collaboration with the Rencontres d’Arles with additional support and London curatorial collaboration from The Photographers’ Gallery.
The bookshop description gives 'Silence and Image' as a hardcover bilingual edition, 370 pages in length, priced at £27.99. The gallery shop says the title accompanies the exhibition-related selection of books, but the publication’s own subject is the critical analysis of photographic practice across several generations and contexts. Takeuchi’s essays include pieces on 'Ken Domon’s Hiroshima' and on the work of Lieko Shiga, underscoring the book’s attention to both historical and contemporary figures.
The Photographers’ Gallery Bookshop is located at 16–18 Ramillies Street, London W1F 7LW. Its August newsletter also notes a free launch event for Sirus F. Gahan’s 'How Many Times Can I Be Born Again' on 13 August and a Kosmo Foto photo walk on 22 August, but 'Silence and Image' is presented in the newsletter as part of the shop’s current book selection rather than as an event.
