Video: An intimate look at John Lennon and Yoko Ono

In 1980, photographer Kishin Shinoyama spent two days with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. He visited them at home and in the music studio and walked with them in Central Park. That’s where he shot the famous cover of “Double Fantasy,” the portrait of the couple kissing.

Shinoyama took hundreds of photographs during those sessions, which can be found in the new Taschen book “Kishin Shinoyama. John Lennon & Yoko Ono. Double Fantasy.”

“It was really a moment of unclouded happiness for John and Yoko” Shinoyama says in the video about the book, made in collaboration with Ono. Fans, of course, know how fleeting that moment was; just three months later, on Dec. 14, Lennon was shot and killed.

“Kishin Shinoyama. John Lennon & Yoko Ono. Double Fantasy” is one of Taschen’s high-end projects, available in a collector’s edition for $700, which is hardcover, cloth-bound, with text in four languages (English, French, German, and Japanese) that is housed in a clamshell box. There are also two art editions; they come with the same hardcover, clamshell-encased book and a limited-edition color print of John and Yoko, signed by Shinoyama and are $1,800.

Taschen has established itself as a purveyor of high-end books that celebrate popular culture and high art. Releases include the Rolling Stones, with a $20,000 art edition; Emilio Pucci, with an $1,800 edition bound in vintage Pucci fabric; Harry Benson’s Beatles photographs, a book and print for $4,000; and Norman Mailer’s “Moon,” which, in its sold-out edition, included a lunar meteorite.

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