This weekend the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany, openend a major exhibition on photography: 

“Photography Calling!”

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.

Daido Moriyama: Japans Scenic Trio. Mutsumatsushima, 1974 ©Daido Moriyama

Aim of the show is:

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changers’ like Shomei Tomatsu, Eikoh Hosoe, Daido Moriyama, Yutaka Takanashi and Nobuyoshi Araki is in my opinion an outdated view on the history of photography. 

Shomei Tomatsu: ”Bottle Melted and Deformed by Atomic Bomb Heat, Radiation and Fire, Nagasaki”, 1961 ©Shomei Tomatsu

I am looking forward to see the exhibition:

Deichtorhallen, House of Photography, Hamburg
June 18 - August 29, 2010 

The exhibition of works by Nobuyoshi Araki (b. 1940), »Silent Wishes«, staged in collaboration with Museum der Moderne in Salzburg, includes some 150 black & white photographs. 

Nobuyoshi Araki, from the series: “My Wife Yoko”, 1967-1975, ©Nobuyoshi Araki

The works exhibited focus on the early photographs by the young, still unknown Araki, which were taken from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. There are also examples of his later work that address the calm, erotic Tokyo beyond the hectic business facade.

The heart of the exhibition is the intimate series »My Wife Yoko« from the Museum der Moderne collection, describing and revolving around the artist’s young wife on their honeymoon, in their home, and on excursions nearby. These works are complemented by a series of 12 photographs from 1989/1990, with which Araki accompanied his wife during her fatal illness: »Winter Journey« tells the moving story of  bidding farewell. More recent photographs show the photographer Araki as he became world famous: as the narrator of erotic scenes and portraits of females.