Literature

In the last period of his marriage with Yohko, Fukase began work on his next photo book, his magnum opus which was published as Karasu [Ravens] in 1986 by Sokyu-sha. The start of the series was a journey to his home island Hokkaido in 1976. He was forty-two years old at the time. His life was in tatters due to issues with alcohol and the imminent collapse of his decade long marriage. Unable to handle the situation, Fukase Tokyo in the hope of escaping his problems. When he returned to Tokyo not long after, he decided to exhibit the photographs he had taken during this trip. He showed the photographs to Shoji Yamagishi, who was working as an editor for the photography magazine Camera Mainichi. Fukase had originally planned to call the series Tonpoku-ki, or "the accounts of an escape to the north," but Yamagishi suggested "ravens", due to the preponderance of photographs of the birds. Fukase recalled that he "wasn't sure at first because it made me think of wildlife photographs but I decided to go with it because of the expression tabi-garasu [literally meaning 'travelling raven' referring to people moving from one place to another with no stable place to live]". By the time of Ravens it becomes absolutely clear that what Fukase was primarily interested in was photographs of himself, looking at himself through the prism of the people, places and events in his life.