OU-en THE SOBOOKS, a two-day event to support a well loved and locally owned Art & Photo bookshop, was held at Gallery Poetic Scape in Nakameguro this weekend.
A rainstorm in June of this year flooded the back room of SO BOOKS (website) resulting in a truck load’s worth loss of inventory. A photo of all of the ruined rare books can be seen at the top of the event’s tumblr and facebook page. Since So Books is so respected in the photography and publishing community, Atsushi Saito of Roshin Books, Takaki Kakishima of Poetic Scape, and photographer Hiroshi Nomura got together to create a fundraising event to help the store’s owner, Ikuo Ogawasara with the setback that the water damage caused.
A benefit sale was planned and a network of photographers, editors, writers, and publishers was invited to donate of photobooks and prints for the cause. In addition to helping out a treasure of the city the sale was an excellent chance to get some super good deals on artwork and books. I was happy and humbled that both of the prints I donated were sold- You can see all that was available on the event’s tumblr ouenthesobooks.tumblr.com .Additionally there was a call for photos for the production of a commemorative zine for the event which you can see some images of above.
Tokyo is a city full of excellent bookshops but I think that an event like OU-en THE SO BOOKS demonstrates not just how special and important this particular bookshop- one so excellently curated and kindly staffed- is to so many people.
Long live SO BOOKS!