Japan Exposures

Of course, the texture and the feeling of flesh are important...

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 12:25:51 +0900

Of course, the texture and the feeling of flesh are important elements for me too. And the appreciation of the model nude, the time while they are taking off and putting on their clothes. I like to capture the slight change in the air. It could be both comfortable and uncomfortable but there is an attraction there.

Sakiko Nomura, “In Conversation With Sakiko Nomura and Eiki Mori”

…[I]t seems necessary first to ask why [Tomatsu’s]...

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 23:15:14 +0900

…[I]t seems necessary first to ask why [Tomatsu’s] inquiry was important. Why should it not have been good enough for Japan to be the fifty-first star amid the stripes, as Tomatsu once called it, and, anyway, why did it matter to him? Perhaps it will not be overreaching to propose that the shattering of Japan in the war was also the shattering of Tomatsu himself, and that it was himself he had to re-create, just as the cities had to re-create themselves where little remained but burnt planes. Buried within every person is a point of intersection between the unique matter of which he consists and the generality of the nation in which he was made — a point where one is inextricable from what one believes one’s nation to be —and it is of the essence of Tomatsu’s work that it makes the national personal and the personal national. Beyond this it is difficult to see.

— Leo Rubinfien, “Shōmei Tōmatsu: The Skin of the Nation”

japancameramag: １９７９年アサヒカメラより Compiled from the July 1979 issue...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 21:46:23 +0900

japancameramag:

１９７９年アサヒカメラより

Compiled from the July 1979 issue of Asahi Camera

Top row, left to right:

Moriyama Daido, Kuwabara Kineo, Tsuchida Hiromi, Sawatari Hajime

Bottom row, left to right:

Araki Nobuyoshi, Suda Issei, Akiyama Ryoji, Kitai Kazuo

Takuma Nakahira (left) and unidentified, Paris, 1971. From...

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 01:28:44 +0900

Takuma Nakahira (left) and unidentified, Paris, 1971. From Circulation: Date, Place, Events (2012).

At that point, I had covered the wall space allotted to me, the floor below it, the reception desk, and the poles holding up the exhibition hall with the photographs I had taken. Furthermore, many of these had been torn down here and there, sometime by themselves of by someone’s mischief, and scattered all over the place. These photographs were apparently considered eyesores, yet I flatly refused their request [to move the photos]. My “work of art” included the total process of photographing, developing, and displaying these photographs everyday, running around like a mouse on a treadmill. Thus, the mountain of photographs that resulted were mere traces of a particular span of time I had lived, and therefore had to be presented and openly accessible to others as best as possible.

Takuma Nakahira, “The Exhaustion of Contemporary Art: My Pariticpation in the Seventh Paris Biennale” (first published in 1971, translated and reprinted in Circulation: Date, Place, Events (2012).

From top to bottom: Kiyoshi Suzuki, 2010 MOMAT Catalog Kanendo...

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 11:44:46 +0900

From top to bottom:

Kiyoshi Suzuki, 2010 MOMAT Catalog
Kanendo Watanabe, A Town Already Seen
Kazuo Kitai, Walking with Leica 3
Seiji Kurata et al., Za, Bosouzoku
Shogo Yamada, Omni Polis
Kazuo Kitai, Spanish Night
Yutaka Takanashi, IN
Yoshiichi Hara, Walk while ye have the light
Masatoshi Naito, Tono Monogatari
Kikuji Kawada, The Globe Theater
Yukichi Watabe, Morocco
Yoshiichi Hara, Fubaika
Kinsuke Shimada, Oka
Yutaka Takanashi, Machi

Tomoko Matsushima, 1976. Photo by Hajime Sawatari. Hajime...

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 19:24:00 +0900

Tomoko Matsushima, 1976. Photo by Hajime Sawatari.

Hajime [Sawatari] is the kind of person who is genius when you let him do what he likes. This may sound somewhat impertinent, but I don’t think there are any true genius photographers. Photographers always have to borrow something to shoot, don’t they, whether it is a person or a landscape? I think a true genius is someone who creates something from scratch, which is why I think that true genius among photographers is impossible. Having said that though, I still think there are actually two genius photographers, and Hajime is one of them. I won’t mention the name of the other.

— Yutaka Takanashi, “Yutaka Takanashi X Hajime Sawatari X Naoki Nishi”

From left to right: Hajime Sawatari, Daido Moriyama, Eikoh...

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 16:43:18 +0900

From left to right: Hajime Sawatari, Daido Moriyama, Eikoh Hosoe, and Tenmei Kanoh. January, 2012.

It’s Kazuo Kitai season in Tokyo: Somehow Familiar...

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 13:46:41 +0900

It’s Kazuo Kitai season in Tokyo:

Somehow Familiar Places
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (Ebisu)
November 24 - January 27

Kobe Dockers
Tosei-sha Gallery (Nakano)
November 29 - December 25

Kazuo Kitai Prints from “Resistance” to Current
Komiyama Shoten, 4th Floor (Kanda)
November 24 - December 25

tokyo-camera-style: Great news for photobook enthusiasts...

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 10:13:49 +0900

tokyo-camera-style:

Great news for photobook enthusiasts outside of Japan- Issei Suda’s sublime reissue of Fūshikaden (風姿花伝) is now in stock in the Japan Exposures bookshop.

Japan Exposures describes this book as a

“Gorgeous 2012 reworking of Issei Suda’s 1979 Fushikaden, long out of print and commanding high prices for what is essentially a poorly-printed book in often fair-to-middling condition. This edition, limited to 500 copies — each of which is signed by Suda and numbered — has been released on the occasion of the two-part Fall 2012 exhibition of the work in Tokyo.”

Japan Exposures also carries Suda’s Minyou Sanga, another fantastic series exploring Japan’s interaction with its folk past with the present (in this case the late 1970’s).

On my own shelves Japanese photobooks outnumber those by non-Japanese photographers roughly eight to one- this is THE Japanese photobook of the year. I am curious (and excited) to read what Microcord has to say about Fūshi kaden. ( I recommend his list of 10 Japanese Photobooks for ICP as well as his thoughts on the choices of other writers.)

For those of you in Tokyo, Fūshikaden can be seen in a two part exhibition at BLD Gallery in Ginza until December 28th, 2012.　

Much of Hashiguchi’s work includes portrait photography, images...

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 23:09:05 +0900

Much of Hashiguchi’s work includes portrait photography, images that are accompanied by written transcriptions of a series of questions answered by his subjects. Working like a sociological ethnographer with a survey approach, he produces a unique overview, one that integrates the urban and rural, ranges of education and affluence. These themes are united by serious attention to the individual’s place in everyday Japanese contemporary life.

Richard Chalfen, PhD
“LOOKING AT JAPANESE SOCIETY: Hashiguchi George as Visual Sociologist” (2003)

Issei Suda perceives reality with a double eye. While...

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 18:00:28 +0900

Issei Suda perceives reality with a double eye. While acknowledging Japan’s leap into modernity, he relies on a centuries-old aesthetic style. In order to do so, however, he employs a visual medium that was itself introduced to Japan by the West. This is what I believe to be Suda’s originality: the tension between the ordinary and the singular, between tradition and modernity.

Ferdinand Brüggemann, Director
Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne

tokyo-camera-style: Suggested exhibition of the month year:...

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 16:42:23 +0900

tokyo-camera-style:

Suggested exhibition of the ~~month~~ year: Issei Suda’s phenomenal Fūshi kaden (風姿花伝) at BLD Gallery in Ginza.　Shot on the streets of Tokyo in the early 1970’s, the photographs delineate Suda’s very particular and often peculiar sense of not place or time, but perhaps being.

Serialized in the monthly magazine Camera Mainichi , under the direction of editor Shoji Yamagishi, Fūshi kaden was Suda’s breakthrough into the Japanese photo world. The series won him the Photographic Society of Japan Newcomer Award in 1976 with exhibitions at the Nikon Salons of Tokyo and Osaka in 1977.

The show is accompanied by a luxuriously constructed black-satin-wrapped photobook that presents to the viewer the entire series through some of the finest printing you’ll ever find. The printing is so good that any difference in quality between the reproductions and actual prints on the walls is inconsequentially minimal. While the quality of the book is substantial, so is the price. If the 15,000 yen price tag is beyond reach the gallery bookshop also offers many of Suda’s older books for sale as well.

If you are going to be in Tokyo between Nov.15th and Dec.28th, be sure to stop on by.

What: Fūshi kaden (風姿花伝)

Who: Issei Suda

Where: BLD Gallery in Ginza.　google streetview (take the elevator to the 8th floor)

When: Open daily, 11am - 7pm (Closed Dec.3)

Part 1. Nov.15 - Dec.2, 2012

Part 2. Dec.4 - Dec.28, 2012

Iwao Yamawaki, Bauhaus Building, Southern View, Dessau,...

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:52:10 +0900

Iwao Yamawaki, Bauhaus Building, Southern View, Dessau, 1930-32.

From Steidl:

Iwao Yamawaki is an interesting figure at the intersection of modernism and the history of Japanese photography. He began his career as an architect but became dissatisfied with Japanese practices. For that reason he travelled to Germany in 1930, where he enrolled as a student of the Bauhaus in Dessau. He started studying architecture at the Bauhaus, but soon moved on to the photography section where he produced architecture photography, portraits, still-lifes and photomontages. The photographic methods of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Walter Peterhans had a big influence on him. Yamawaki continuously analysed the relationship between photography and the design of spaces, and he often tried to interpret the connection between human beings and architectural space in his pictures.

A portrait of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki (right), from Tadahiko...

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:12:50 +0900

A portrait of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki (right), from Tadahiko Hayashi’s 1971 book 日本の作家 (Japanese Literary Figures). Presumably that is Tanizaki’s wife on the left, but the person is unmentioned in the photo’s caption.

Compare and contrast with another Hayashi photo of a novelist.

pxrxllxls: benhasten: From “Early Days” by Tomoko Sawada When...

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:21:21 +0900

pxrxllxls:

benhasten:

From “Early Days” by Tomoko Sawada

When I started to take pictures, I loved my image taken in photos, which looked attractive and cute. I could make myself look like a model or an actress in pictures. As I looked at my pictures again and again, the gap between my real image and my image in a picture widened. In other words, my appearance could be changed easily, but my personality did not change.

Tomoko SAWADA via PingMag

bremser: Tomoko Sawada, ID400 (#1-100) (detail), 1998-2001

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:06:01 +0900

bremser:

Tomoko Sawada, ID400 (#1-100) (detail), 1998-2001

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 15:49:08 +0900

burnedshoes:

© Gueorgui Pinkhassov / Magnum Photos, 1996, A hotel in the Akasaka area, Tokyo

See more pictures of the story here.

» find more of Magnum Photos here «

uncannyvalleyofthedolls: Photographer Eikoh Hosoe with mobile...

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 09:29:19 +0900

uncannyvalleyofthedolls:

Photographer Eikoh Hosoe with mobile phone and beer in Poland

Sumiko Yagawa (1931-2002) was a novelist, poet, and...

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 22:24:03 +0900

Sumiko Yagawa (1931-2002) was a novelist, poet, and children’s author. Her retelling of the Japanese folk tale The Crane Wife is available in English. For 10 years, she was married to literary bad boy Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, who as a translator of the works of Marquis de Sade was tried and successfully prosecuted for obscenity in 1969. In 1962 Shibusawa published an article about Hans Bellmer which included a photo of one of Bellmer’s dolls. It was this picture that so inspired Simon Yotsuya that he changed the way he made his own dolls.

In 1981 the photographer Nobuyoshi Araki directed a soft core...

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:53:00 +0900

In 1981 the photographer Nobuyoshi Araki directed a soft core porno film The Pseudo Diary of a High School Girl for Nikkatsu, Japan’s oldest film studio, which had in the 1970s turned to producing almost exclusively roman porno (e.g. “romantic pornography”) to save itself from financial collapse. During this adult film heyday, they were churning out on average three films a month.

Araki not only directed the film, but documented with his more familiar still camera the behind the scenes makings of the film, released as the above book. The cover refers to him as a (wink, wink) “virgin” director, and the promotional obi calls him a “horny genius.”

Araki himself, many years later, didn’t exactly look fondly upon the experience.