Miscellanea (mainly) on Japanese art and culture...
Trailer for the 1971 movie: “Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets” by Shūji Terayama.
Shūji Terayama was a Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer.
In 1967, Terayama formed the Tenjō Sajiki theater troupe. Terayama with his Tenjō troupe was a crucial and highly influential part of the Japanese Avant-Garde at the end 1906s.
Also in 1967, Terayama started an experimental cinema and gallery called ‘Universal Gravitation,’ which is in fact still in existence.
Terayama published almost 200 literary works, and over 20 short and full-length films.
By the way, the photographer Issei Suda worked as cameraman for the theater group, before he became an independent photographer and published his major series “Fûshi Kaden”.
And Daido Moriyama was well connected to Shūji Terayama. Moriyama’s very first book “Japan: A Photo Theater” had a foreword by Terayama. And the book included several images of the troupe.
Daido Moriyama: Japan Theater, 1967
“Photography Calling” Exhibition - but Japan isn’t heard…
This weekend the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany, openend a major exhibition on photography:
The exhibition includes ca. 30 photographers from the USA and Europe from the 1960s until today.
“Photography Calling!” is a great title, but based on the title I guess Asian photography and especially Japanese photography didn’t make enough noise, because it wasn’t heard by the curators of the show.
The exhibition PHOTOGRAPHY CALLING! conducts in a contrapuntal dialogue with the works of younger photographers a discussion on the documentary in photography. The exhibition poses questions concerning traditions, relationships and differences: how, for example, does Diane Arbus formulate her question about the middle of American society in New York towards the end of the 1960s, and how does Boris Mikhailov answer this question in Germany of 2008? How do Robert Adams and John Gossage depict the changes in the American landscape under the effect of civilization – And what is the contemporary answer to the male voyeuristic gaze in Winogrand’s photographs of New York women? Is there an Eastern European answer, albeit from a different time and tradition, to the self-portraits of Lee Friedlander of the 1960s and 1970s? [Quote: Sprengel Museum]
The exhibition which wants to “conduct in a contrapuntal dialogue on the documentary in photography” follows the old world view until the end of the 1990’s that ignored Asian photography, and especially Japanese photography, completely. The above formulated questions show, that American photographers are being seen almost exclusively as the primary inventors of new positions in documentary photography.
Of course Arbus, Adams, e.g., are major photographers whose work was extremely influential, but to talk about documentary photography while ignoring ‘game changers’ like Shomei Tomatsu, Eikoh Hosoe, Daido Moriyama, Yutaka Takanashi and Nobuyoshi Araki is in my opinion an outdated view on the history of photography.
Was John Szarkowski the most influential person in 20th-century photography?
This question headlines an article by Sean O’Hagan in the Guardian. O’Hagan writes:
An insightful critic as well as a visionary curator, Szarkowski filled New York’s Museum of Modern Art with the colour photography of William Eggleston, and championed the transgressive work of Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander. Everyone who cares about photography is in his debt. …. As a writer, Szarkowski was innovative; as a curator, he was revolutionary. In 1967, during the so-called Summer of Love, he curated a show called New Documents at Moma. It featured the work of three relatively unknown photographers: Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Gary Winogrand. … At Moma, Szarkowski also hosted challenging shows by pioneering European photographers like Lartigue, Brassai and Cartier-Bresson. … @guardian.co.uk
O’Hagan of course mentiones the famous controversy in regard to the first William Eggleston exhibition at the MOMA (the New York Times declared it the worst show of the year), but those who follow my writings know that my angle is not on Western photography.
And in this case I just would like to remind of the fact that John Szarkovski also curated the seminal exhibition “New Japanese Photography” in 1974. In my opinion the qualitity of the selected artists/works - among others Ken Domon, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Shomei Tomatsu, Kikuji Kawada, Hiromi Tsuchida, Masahisa Fukase, Ikko Narahara, Eikoh Hosoe and Daido Moriyama - and the essays by Szarkowski and his co-curator Shôji Yamagishi set the benchmark for all Western exhibitions and writings on Japanese photography to follow.
… So the other day at Sokyusha, the preeminent photo book publisher in Tokyo, I surprised myself by purchasing a copy of Moriyama’s recent book Nagisa. As I flipped through it, from behind the counter Ota-san, the shop owner, mentioned that this collection is simply of Moriyama’s current love interest, a kabukicho & kayokoku singer named Yoko Nagisa. While my photography book collection might be lean on Daido Moriyama, books featuring lovers or wives of Japanese photographers are well represented. Looking at it in the context of such a book it was doubly interesting.
Yoko. What else could her name be but Yoko? …
Daido Moriyama: Nagisa. Akio Nagasawa Publishing, Tokyo 2010
Video of: Hidden Books, Hidden Stories: A Slideshow curated by Lou Reed for The New York Photo Festival
Hidden Books, Hidden Stories consists of two components. The first Photographs will be selected and sequenced by Mr. Reed and will be accompanied by an original musical score.
Hidden Books, Hidden Stories is an exceptionally personal exploration of myriad imaginative and compelling visual narratives. Some are in books, some presented in larger-than-life scales of projection and display that impress and delight. Part one is is a grand audiovisual presentation that will premiere during the festival’s opening night Vernissage. After the show’s premiere, the projection will be screened during regular intervals during the festival on the presentation stage at St. Ann’s Warehouse.
Part two of Hidden Books, Hidden Stories is a collection of participating artists’ books in a custom-built display that will give the visiting public an opportunity to experience each individual artist’s narrative in its entirety.
I would love to see the show, but It’s a little bit far away and I will participate in another festival: 3. International Photobook Festival, Kassel, Germany
