Walk while ye have the light — Yoshiichi Hara, Sokyusha, 2011

Published by Sokyusha on 21 November 2011 in an edition of 600 copies, Walk while ye have the light (光あるうちに) follows Yoshiichi Hara's 2008 photobook Dark of True. Where that earlier volume examined the unstable territory between truth and fiction, this book continues the inquiry through a looser, more atmospheric sequencing of 63 black-and-white photographs across 68 pages.

The images move through night streets, rain-soaked riverbanks, and wet pavements, where light catches on reflective surfaces and blurs the edges of figures and objects. People, places, and things are drawn together less by narrative than by shared atmosphere, so that the sequence reads as a set of related impressions rather than a documentary record of any single subject.

The title is taken from John 12:35 — "Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you" — a passage printed at the book's opening. Read critically rather than devotionally, it frames photography itself as a search conducted against the approach of darkness, consistent with the hesitant, twilight quality of the pictures that follow.

The hardcover volume, 260 × 232 mm, was designed by Koichi Hara and printed by Taiyo Printing Co. It sits within Hara's later, more introspective period of work, following earlier titles such as Mandala Zukan and Stripper Zukan. Original copies have become difficult to source and are frequently listed as out of stock by dealers. Within Lokator100's Photography & Photobooks collection, it stands as one of the more fully realized statements of Hara's later practice.