Hajime Sawatari - Complete Alice

Title: Complete Alice (Alice + Alice from the Sea)

Author: Hajime Sawatari

Publisher: Kawade Shobo Shinsha

Year: 2006

Pages: 168

Binding: Hardcover

ISBN-10: 4309268900

ISBN-13: 9784309268903

A two-volume hardcover slipcase set compiling Hajime Sawatari's celebrated Alice works: 'Alice' and 'Alice from the Sea'. Published in 2006 as 'Complete Alice', this edition brings together faithful reissues of the two landmark photobooks originally released in 1973 and 1979.

Created during the height of Japan's experimental photobook era, the series presents Sawatari's stylized photographic interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland universe. Shot in England and Scotland with the British model Samantha, the books blend narrative photography, fashion aesthetics, surreal staging, poetic atmosphere, and meticulous visual sequencing into a body of work that has become deeply influential within Japanese photobook history.

Alice unfolds as a dreamlike, carefully composed world of interiors, gardens, costumes, and theatrical imagery, while Alice from the Sea revisits Samantha several years later on the Scottish coast, shifting toward a more windswept, melancholic, and quietly sensual atmosphere. Across both volumes, Sawatari explores themes of fantasy, transition, innocence, beauty, and soft eroticism through mood, light, gesture, and cinematic composition rather than explicit presentation.

The series is widely regarded as one of the defining achievements of 1970s Japanese photography and photobook design, bridging fine art photography, fashion imagery, and literary visual storytelling. The books continue to be studied, exhibited, and archived by museums, universities, and specialist libraries worldwide, reflecting their enduring cultural and historical significance within international photobook culture.

This 2006 complete edition preserves the original works in an elegant collector format: two hardcover volumes housed in a printed slipcase, designed as a faithful archival presentation of Sawatari's iconic Alice cycle.

An essential set for serious collectors of Japanese photography, narrative photobooks, avant-garde visual culture, and historically important artist books.