"A mixture of various elements - eroticism, humor, cruelty, sharpness, a strange peacefulness, and magic tricks - characterizes her work. She is one of the most up-and-coming photographers in Japan." This is how Tokyo-based art critic Kotaro Iizawa describes works by Emi Anrakuji. After graduating from art school in Tokyo in the mid-1980s, Anrakuji suffered a cerebral disease that prevented her from making art for more than a decade. During her gradual recovery, she began to produce block prints, then photographs of herself in situations that explore the boundary between documentary and constructive photography.

Although Anrakuji has assembled her prints into books for herself for years, "HMMT?" is the artist's first commercially available photo-book. Filled with more than 200 jigsaw puzzle-like images, all in black and white, the book's touchy subjects (especially in Japan) such as sexual organs are treated in ways that are both sensual and humorous. Her full-length and close-up self-portraits, in which she exposes everything but her face, are especially arresting. 

A winner of national and international photography awards, including theYoshikazu Ueno Photography Award, the International Photography Award (both in 2003), and most recently the prestigious Higashikawa Prize awarded for a new photographer, Emi Anrakuji is unmistakably Japan's most exciting newcomer in the field of photography.

This deluxe edition was created by the artist in the limited edition of 40. She pasted 13 original color C-prints (3x5 in.) onto certain pages in the book. It is signed and numbered by the artist and comes with an obi handmade by the artist.