SOKOHI is an artist book by Moe Suzuki, developed in a workshop with Yumi Goto, in 2019. To use the notebook made by blind people as the structural and metaphorical support to tell the story of the artist’s father, who suffers from glaucoma and is slowly losing his vision makes all the sense in the world. At least, in our world. Thanks to brilliant book-makers like Suzuki, the world of photobooks has become even more fluid, open and seamlessly integrated with the world of artists’ books today. SOKOHI, which holds personal notes and photographs of Tetsuichi Suzuki, disintegrates more and more towards the end, in a parallel process to his gradual loss of eyesight. His daughter tries to understand, and to show us what she feels that is going on behind her father’s eyes: At first tiny and few, then more and always bigger laser-cut holes appear in the pages, simulating the “blind spots” in the father’s visual field, and what the artist feels must be his inner life. A highly elaborate book that touches us in an intimate way, without asking for pity or sadness. Pure visual poetry at its best.
