Rankafu showcases for the first time an exceptional set of orchid woodblock prints from early 20th century Japan. Considered masterworks of botanical art, the Rankafu prints are visually stunning and reproduced here in full colour, showcasing the fine details of this spectacular art form. Accompanying these stunning prints, the authors tell the story of Shotaro Kaga, a pioneering horticulturist whose orchid collection and breeding programme started a craze in Japan that continues to this day. Kaga and his gifted orchid gardener, Kenkichi Goto were highly skilled orchid growers and developed hundreds of spectacular orchid hybrids. Kaga's interest in orchids was sparked by his visit to Kew in 1910 where he first saw tropical orchids in the extensive greenhouses, and visited many famous orchid nurseries such as Sander & Sons, from whom he would buy hundreds of plants over the coming decades. This book is the most comprehensive work to date on Rankafu and is unrivalled in its breadth of information and research. It is a beautiful book that will appeal to orchid fanatics and lovers of botanical art, as well as those with an interest in 20th century Japan and the artistic process of making Japanese woodblock prints. With a foreword by Phillip Cribb, leading orchid expert and author of many orchid books.

Presents a collection of botanical paintings along with descriptions of the artists' techniques and backgrounds.

A new edition of Yamamoto's much-loved photographic homage to the precarious, the delicate and the humble, with new images and a redesigned cover Japanese photographer Masao Yamamoto trained as an oil painter before discovering that photography was the ideal medium for the theme that most interested him--the ability of the image to evoke memories. Small Things in Silence surveys the 20-year career of one of Japan's most important photographers. Yamamoto's portraits, landscapes and still lifes are made into small, delicate prints, which the photographer frequently overpaints, dyes or steeps in tea. Edited and sequenced by Yamamoto himself, this volume includes images from each of the photographer's major projects--Box of Ku, Nakazora, Kawa and Shizuka--as well as installation shots of some of Yamamoto's original photographic installations, and, in this new edition, seven new images and a new cover. In the words of Yamamoto himself: I try to capture moments that no one sees and make a photo from them. When I see them in print, a new story begins. Masao Yamamoto (born 1957) lives and works in Japan. He has published numerous books, including a previous edition of Small Things in Silence (RM/Seigensha, 2015) and Tori (Radius Books, 2016). His work is held in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the International Center of Photography, New York, and others.

Contains research articles on the mathematics and applications of control theory and on those parts of optimization theory concerned with the dynamics of deterministic or stochastic systems in continuous or discrete time or otherwise dealing with differential equations, dynamics, infinite-dimensional spaces, or fundamental issues in variational analysis and geometry.

Sterile, geometric beauty of old pools, many built in the Socialist era, set the tone for these photographs.