I can only imagine the blog visits I'll get from people looking for ancient Greek / Roman poetry, or trying to buy a Gothic Lolita dress... so, mild nudity ahead. Be warned. Also, the author seems big on intellectual property, so I'll put only the cover up, and let you explore through the review's many links if you want more.
The few and proud who follow this review blog, should know by now that I get a kcik when I happen to find something really quirky while shopping for dōjinshi, especially when it deviates from typical dōjin fare. I'm talking about self-published travelogues, reviews of Tokyo restaurants where you can stuff your face all you want - and, of course, weirdo art projects. Today's dōjinshi,12Keys' Metamorphose, squarely falls within this category.
A bit of background, so you don't get the wrong idea and assume I started reviewing softcore photography. 12Keys (十二の鍵)'s typical output is illustration, in an ornate, vaguely 'kawaii meets Art Deco' style that I actually find quite enticing. The other two dōjinshi to their name are, in fact, illustration books (and I do plan to get my hands on the awesomely titled Book of Books of Booby). However, they do dabble in other kinds of art, from felt sculpting to performance art, as their excellent web site shows.
So, what's with the painted lady on the cover of this book? Well, according to the brief foreword attached, it's an attempt to create beauty, in order to lead us to the creation of a better world... cheeky statements aside, what we have here is a collection of pics from a photoset where model Tereza Nakajima poses on a rooftop, with three different, colorful body paints made by 12Keys themselves. The setting is mundane, and props are minimal: aside for an umbrella and a pair of sunglasses, only featured in a few pics, the rest is the model's body cast against the concrete of the building that acts as a setting. Some of the bodypaints are abstrat in nature, while others feature the stylized chibi forms typical of 12Keys' illustrations. The booklet is about 24 pages, full color, and ends with an interview with the model, and a few lines of afterword.
While these contents might not seem much to build upon, I have to say that the project does have some artistic and thematic merits, more than the format belies at least. Discourses about body representation and femininity are probably reaching (and part of an academic past I'll gladly spare you), but there is a lot to say about 12Keys work even just on a surface, aesthetic level: the contrast that the drab concrete, the model's pale complexion, and the colorful body paint is actually emphasized by the subdued, at times grainy and under / overexposed style of the photographs. 12Keys' body paint, and Nakajima's whimsical and quirky demeanor, reinvigorate a dreary, Lain-like cityscape. Also, while the subject of Metamorphose might seem offbeat, there is actually a long tradition of body paint (and performance art in general) in Japan.
All in all, an outlier that definitely deserves a second glance. It's a fairly old thing, published in 2013, so it might be difficult to get your hands on a physical copy. On the other hand, they have a very interesting Twitter account, where you can find more recent body paint works.
