In Japan, legend has it that a man and a woman who have a predestined encounter have had each other’s little fingers tied together by an invisible red string since the time they were born.

Unfortunately, the red string tying my parents together either came untied, broke, or perhaps it was never even tied to begin with. But if the two had never met, I would never have been born into this world. If anything, you might say it is between parent and child that there is an unbreakable red string of fate.

Many entries this year featured a dual structure but this one, with two separate bound books, one on either side of the cover’s interior, is both logical and allows multiple readings. - Anne Wilkes Tucker, photography curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The split binding allows the reader to page through one side and then the other, but the powerfulness comes from pairing both halves together. In this delicate and personal family album, Yoshikatsu Fujii ties the memory of his family back together with the cultural metaphor of red string. - Larissa Leclair, Founder of the Indie Photobook Library

I feel this totally hand-made book features the bonds of human. The title comes from some old Japanese saying that a woman and a man who have fate to encounter is tied with red string on their little fingers together. The book shows us a simple thing, a man needs a man anyway. Also I like warmness of the touch sense of this binding by the photographer himself. - Hisako Motoo, independent curator and editor

YOSHIKATSU FUJII, born and raised in Hiroshima city, graduated from Tokyo Zokei University of Arts with a BA in art film. He began photography work in 2006, and now lives and works in Hiroshima. His photographic works often deal with his own view towards the relationships within his family.

His project Red String, motivated by his parents’ divorce and produced as a hand-made photobook of a limited edition of 35, was nominated for several awards including the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards. The book was also selected by TIME magazine as one of the Best Photobooks of 2014.

The book is retained in MoMA The Museum of Modern Art Library in New York.

His following project, Incipient Strangers, depicts a wider subject, expanded from his parents to his extended family. A photobook with the same title, published for an exhibition at Reminders Photography Stronghold in Tokyo, won the Self Publishing PHOTOLUX Award.

Yoshikatsu Fujii

Best Photobooks of 2014 / Time Magazine

Yoshikatsu Fujii / Photobook Melbourne

First Photobook Shortlist: Red String / Paris Photo

Photobook Month: Yoshikatsu Fujii / Darwin Magazine

Red String / LensCulture