Views of Japan

Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck are filmmakers whose writing credits include American Graffiti, Lucky Lady, French Postcards, Best Defense, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Radioland Murders. They also worked on the screenplays for the original Star Wars and the first Mission Impossible. Both are members of the Writers Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Huycks have been collecting Japanese photography since 2002 and have assembled an encyclopedic collection of images from the nineteenth century to the present.

Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck are filmmakers whose writing credits include American Graffiti, Lucky Lady, French Postcards, Best Defense, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Radioland Murders. They also worked on the screenplays for the original Star Wars and the first Mission Impossible. Both are members of the Writers Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Huycks have been collecting Japanese photography since 2002 and have assembled an encyclopedic collection of images from the nineteenth century to the present.

Manfred Heiting is a designer and editor of photo publications and a collector of photobooks focusing on the period between 1886 and 1980. He has designedand edited extensive surveys of German, Soviet and Japanese photobooks. Heiting is currently working on surveys of Czech and Dutch photobooks.

Most collectors have their own unique attractions and approaches to the objects of their collecting. This volume features the adventures of Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, two renowned fi lmmakers who began collecting Japanese photography more than a decade ago, and whose ongoing hunt seems indeed like a Hollywood movie. A memoir about their love of Japanese photography and their experiences collecting it, Views of Japan makes available a selection of rare masterpieces from their extensive collection, along with a personal "script" recounting how they scouted, debated, selected and ultimately acquired many of the works. This was no small undertaking considering the rarity of some of the images, particularly those taken before the 1970s. The result is a distinctly personal presentation of one of the great private collections of Japanese photography in the world.