The tongue-sucking genius of Masahisa Fukase – in pictures

Pierced by pins, tormented by ravens, obscured by bathtub bubbles … the great Japanese photographer created astonishing, disturbing and highly personal images of himself, his family – and his beloved cat Sasuke the Second

@mlestone Main image: A Game, 1983. Photograph: Masahisa Fukase

Thu 27 Jul 2017 02.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 19 Oct 2022 11.03 EDT

  • Masahisa Fukase died in 2012 after being in a coma for 20 years, but his reputation has continued to grow. The Japanese photographer, who fell down stairs in a Tokyo bar and never recovered from the damage to his brain, is seen here in a 1983 self-portrait. It is one of a series of large-format Polaroids that he altered dramatically. The Incurable Egoist, a new retrospective, is at Les Rencontres d’Arles photography festival until 24 September. All photographs: Masahisa Fukase Archive/Courtesy of the Michael Hoppen Gallery

  • ‘I wonder,’ wrote Fukase, ‘if any other photographer in the world has photographed as many cat yawns.’ This shot of his cat Sasuke was altered to echo the previous self-portrait

  • Fukase was born in 1934, in a small town called Bifuka on Hokkaido, Japan’s second largest island, where his family owned a photo studio. He moved to Tokyo in the 1950s. This self-portrait, taken in his final year of activity, 1992, has again been altered

  • In 1978, Fukase’s kitten Sasuke – named after a cartoon ninja – disappeared. ‘I put up about 100 lost cat posters,’ he wrote, ‘but he still didn’t come back.’ A woman called him about a stray that ‘looked just like the cat on the poster’, but Fukase realised it was not Sasuke. ‘Well,’ he thought, ‘let’s go with this guy anyway.’ And he took in Sasuke No 2. This image of his cat was altered to chime with the previous 1992 self-portrait

  • This image was taken in 1991 after Fukase had begun returning to Hokkaido. The series, notable for its intensity and introspection, is made up of ‘selfie-style’ portraits

  • Fukase was fond of printing his own work and would often embellish his images to ‘make’ a photograph instead of merely ‘take’ it. This 1992 print is called Berobero, or Sucking, and refers to his habit of licking or sucking people’s tongues

  • This is from a street photography series called Hibi, which translates as Cracks. They can be found in everything here, from the road markings to the surface of the pavement. Fukase often painted over his black-and-white bromide prints with bright colours

  • Fukase gained a reputation as a radical photographer for his earlier series The Solitude of Ravens. Made between 1975 and 1982, it followed the end of his second marriage, to Yōko Wanibe. Fukase used the bird as a symbol of his own solitude, even saying in 1982 that he had ‘become a raven’

  • The ravens were realised in moving, near-monochrome prints, intended to symbolise his own heartbreak after he and his wife divorced

  • This image, from 1992, is a return to one of his favourite motifs. In Japanese mythology, ravens are disruptive creatures, omens of turbulent times

  • Fukase’s self-portraits can be unsettling as well as amusing. This is from his final series, Bukubuku (Bubbling), in which he took 79 self-portraits in his bathtub with a waterproof camera

  • The bathtub series has been described as a ‘whimsical if somewhat morbid game of solitaire’

  • Fukase’s series Memories of My Father resulted in a book that combined Fukase’s own pictures and shots from the family archive. The result is a kind of visual biography of his father, seen here in 1986, one year before his death. The images trace the elder Fukase’s childhood, then his family life and into middle and old age, ending with cremation and memorial

  • It’s no surprise Fukase ended up a photographer: his family ran a portrait studio business in Hokkaido. Fukase, far left in this whole-family group from 1975, got his start as a documentary photographer for magazines

  • Fukase re-created the family portrait in 1987, a year after his father died
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