2013年にオランダの写真雑誌「Foam Magazine」のTalent Issueに選出され、2015年にはPhoto LondonにてJohn Kobal Awardの初代受賞者となるなど、欧米で大きく注目される日本人フォトグラファー、横田大輔の作品集。本書はふたつの未発表作品シリーズから構成されており、東京のホテルの一室で彼女を被写体とした作品と、現在の作風の原点ともなった2007年の青森でのロードトリップの中で撮影された作品を収録。またこれら未発表作品に加え、作者自身による幼少期の夏の体験を綴ったエッセイや、日本写真を専門とするキュレーター、Marc Feustel書き下ろしのテキストも掲載。本書は作者による女性への讃歌であり、荒木経惟『センチメンタルな旅』や『わが愛、陽子』、そして深瀬昌久『鴉』や『洋子』に続く、私写真の系譜を受け継ぐものとなっている。

Taratine is the first US monograph by acclaimed Japanese photographer Daisuke Yokota. Highly regarded for his technical and aesthetic kinships with the avant-garde Mono-ha movement of the ‘60s and with Provoke-era masters such as Daido Moriyama and Takuma Nakahira, Taratine represents a new direction for Yokota, one that centers his work for the first time in another Japanese tradition, that of the confessional photographic I-novel. Comprised of photographs and a moving essay penned by Yokota, Taratine is his most personal work to date. Taratine brings together two bodies of new work—one from a road trip to Tohoku in 2007, and a second taken in Tokyo in 2014. The Tohoku photographs were inspired by Yokota happening upon an ancient ginkgo tree in the Aomori prefecture. Called “Taratine”, this tree has been worshipped by generations of women for its legendary fertility-enhancing properties. Yokota was reminded both of the Tohoku region’s traditional—and lingering—connection to the awe of natural spirits (the influence of Jomon-period animism) and of memories from his own childhood. From this experience came a photographic ode to those traditions and memories, one that also expresses his strong admiration for the important women in his life: his mother, in the case of the Aomori pictures; and his girlfriend, in the Tokyo pictures. By fusing the two together in Taratine, Yokota is charting a new direction for his work. As Marc Feustel observes in the afterword, “Unlike its predecessors, Taratine is driven by a more ambiguous and slippery set of emotions and sensations. A need for maternal love evolves into lust and desire. As much a book about sounds and smells as one of images—Taratine heightens all the senses as it breathes fresh air into a grand Japanese tradition.”