condition: good, minor edge wear, binding intact.

A social documentary. An appropriation of distinctions between elements. Grey area. An essay in images that repeat themselves. An apparent way to dilute the importance of one over another. Black and white photographs, hand written texts, and xeroxed pages.

“A year ago, I visited Aichi prefecture in the end of summer. It was to reflect on the work of Nobuya Hitsuda, as well as to see the exhibition “In the Little Playground: Hitsuda Nobuya and his surrounding students” that reflects on the time, in his 40 years of teaching experience, he spent with his students, such as Yoshitomo Nara, Hiroshi Sugito, Kyoko Murase, Mika Kato and many more.

Although having visited on an assignment, I was overwhelmed with emotion. Even for people who are actively recognized, there are still moments, numerous times in your life, where one needs to spend those blue hours alone. The process, to be alone, to suffer with unsettled emotion, is necessary to move forward.

Around the same time, I was asked by chance to write an essay, and decided to write on raising children. Raising children is also about continuous time that cannot be controlled. In the end of that summer, those were the two things that were on my mind, so I decided to put together an issue for Here and There, focusing on the blue hour that can make our lives colorful, as well as the color blue itself.

I looked up at the blue sky. Blue is a color that represents the beauty of nature, but at the same time, it exists in many things manmade. Blue can be found in clothing you wear against your skin, somewhere near you, and far away. The aim is to seek for a blue in personal emotions and in the growing process of people and to find it scattered in the world. This, hoping that it will be an attempt to sprout something in people’s hearts.”

—Nakako Hayashi

Bless came to fame in the winter of 97/98, when the models of a Martin Margiela fashion show wore Bless wigs made out of fur. Heralded as one of fashion’s most innovative designers, the Paris and Berlin-based duo (Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag) quickly refused to capitalize on one milieu. Constantly investigating the boundaries of style, Bless slides from fashion to beauty, interior decoration to art exhibition, collaboration with other brands to stylized advertising. Their production, which sits on the fine line between art object and design, high function and high fashion, is always unique and marked by the recycling and adaptation of unexpected items put to use in a totally new way.

Designed by Manuel Raeder, this fully illustrated book features for the first time the wide range of Bless’ activity and documents a unique mode of cultural production.

Bless have exhibited internationally at the 1st berlin biennale (1998/99), Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1999), Centre Pompidou (2000), Manifesta 4 (2002), Palais de Tokyo (2003), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2004), and most recently at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2006). Their collaborations with other brands range from Adidas to Levi’s, Nike, Mikli and Droog over to the jewellery designer Bucherer.

The theme of the nineth issue of Here and There is HER LIFE. It deals with the various factors that make up the many waves in a woman’s life, such as working, becoming pregnant, giving birth. The colorful stories told by Elein Fleiss, Laetitia Bena, Yurie Nagashima, Miranda July, Midori Araki and Aiko Yamada, reflect each of their lives.

Nakako Hayashi writes: “There are various lives, various moments and various emotions. I wish to capture the ripples of emotion in our daily lives as seeds, right before they turn into fluff and float away. I wish to keep observing what grows from there. I guess this may be what I want to do with Here and There.”

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“The reason I decided to have the idea of loneliness as the subject of our feature was nourished through my e-mails with Elein Fleiss. It all started when I asked her, for a magazine, about Purple Journal’s editorial direction. She then mentioned that as we live in the present, she sensed the need for artists to face the loneliness within. I was touched by her point of view and began to think that I would like to deal with the issue in Here and There as well. I truly hope that the feeling I nurtured for half a year will become the new seed for people who may pick up this issue.

This SANPO issue began from a chance conversation I had with Akira Onozuka. As trees grow older every year, Here and There has slowly, but steadily, brought people together and has grown in the past six years. I would like to send my gratitude to everyone who took part in helping me with this issue, including the writing, photography and translation. As you may have decided to pick this up, I wish that I will meet you someday, somewhere.”

—Nakako Hayashi