Dear SSJ Members,

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(Apologies for cross-listings)

I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book on Japanese vernacular photography.The book is entitled: /Snapping and Wrapping: Personal Photography in Japan/ by Richard Chalfen (Vernon Press, 2021): https://vernonpress.com/book/1169 <https://vernonpress.com/book/1169>

Additional materials including recent references, additional illustrations, suggestions for related studies and original fieldwork will be available on an accompanying blog.

/Snapping and Wrapping/is an original study of Japanese visual culture, pictorial communication, and family photography. The book explores how ordinary people in everyday life produce their own albums as expressions of Japanese family life. The theme of "how people looked" is described from how people appeared in and looked at their own photographs. The book represents a qualitative study of analog camera use involving personal fieldwork undertaken between 1993 and 2009. The metaphor of "wrapping culture" (Hendry) is suggested for ways of interpreting pictorial content and production in conjunction with acknowledged cultural influences and values of Japanese culture. Across an introduction and six chapters, the book covers a series of research topics evoked by efforts to recover, repair, and return millions of photographs to survivors following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Memory, privacy and kinds of information control are reviewed as strategies of sharing pictures, "presence" and the use of photographs for interpersonal interaction and communication. Throughout the monograph examples of analog personal photography are cited for potential comparisons to the intensely popular digitalization of contemporary photographic recordings and, in turn, facilitate making informed speculations for future photographic practice. This book will be of interest to upper-level and graduate students and young scholars in the fields of media and culture and Asian Studies (especially Japanese visual culture), as well as those working on sensitive relationships of family, memory and representation.

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Acknowledgements & Preface

1. Introduction: Orientation and Organization

2. Collections of Japanese Family Photographs

3. Household Pictures & Wallet Pictures in the U.S. and Japan

4. Work Place and Tourist Photography in Japan and U.S

5. Snapshots in Japanese Pet Cemeteries^

6. Ghost Appearances in Japanese Snapshots

7. "Wrapping Up" and Connecting the Threads

Appendix 1 - Methods of Study

Appendix 2 - The Case of Orphan Photograph Albums

Richard Chalfen

Emeritus, Anthropology, Temple University