Wandering Dog — Mai Nakama, GRAF Publishers, 2024
Wandering Dog (巡る犬) is a hardcover photobook by Mai Nakama, published by GRAF Publishers on 20 September 2024 as a first edition, first printing. The book was conceived following an encounter described by the photographer: on a farm during her travels, she met a pregnant cow she hoped to observe through calving. The cow was later found dead. This event opens a sequence that extends across 56 pages and 43 black-and-white photographs, moving through animals, land, and the rhythms of everyday life in an unnamed rural Japanese town.
Nakama's images alternate between intimate close-up and stark, wide composition. Her black-and-white printing favours contrast over gradation, so that light appears to emerge from darkness rather than illuminate it evenly. The book does not comment on its subject matter; it records it, holding scenes of birth, death, and ordinary rural labour within the same visual register.
As an object, Wandering Dog measures 210 × 252 mm and is bound as a thread-sewn hardcover with hollow-back construction, printed and bound in Japan by SunM Color Co., Ltd. The book was designed by Katsuya Kato, edited and published under Shuhei Motoyama, with English translation by Shinichiro Ishii. Text appears in parallel Japanese and English. The edition is limited to 300 copies; it is not numbered per available production data, and no ISBN has been confirmed for this title.
About the Photographer
Mai Nakama (b. 1987, Yamaguchi; lives and works in Tokyo) is a Japanese photographer whose practice centres on memory, everyday life, and the boundaries between presence and absence. Her work has been shown at Nikon Salon in Tokyo, Osaka, and Shinjuku, at Book Marute, Gallery Kaido, and at Das Japanische Haus in Germany. Her photographs are held in the collection of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, and in 2021 she received the 1Wall Kohara Encouragement Award. Wandering Dog continues the black-and-white, narrative-rooted approach that runs through her broader body of work.
Readers exploring Japanese photobook publishing more widely can browse our Japanese Photobooks collection, or the wider Photography Books selection at Lokator100.
