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changers’ like Shomei Tomatsu, Eikoh Hosoe, Daido Moriyama, Yutaka Takanashi and Nobuyoshi Araki is in my opinion an outdated view on the history of photography.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

This Sunday  I will have an artist talk with Yutaka Takanashi, the co-founder of the legendary “Provoke” group.

Rencontre avec Yutaka Takanashi
Le BAL, Paris
May 22, 3pm

Yutaka Takanashi: Untitled, from the series “Toshi-e” (Towards the City), ca. 1971

Rencontre-discussion avec Yutaka Takanashi et Ferdinand Brueggemann, historien de la photographie japonaise.

Yutaka Takanashi présentera la série Machi, exposée au BAL. Initiée en 1975, cette dernière rompt radicalement avec le style flou, surexposé, expressionniste, en noir et blanc, des années Provoke.

Co-fondateur du légendaire magazine Provoke en 1968, Yutaka Takanashi est une figure majeure de l’histoire de la photographie japonaise.

Avec Machi, Takanashi se concentre sur l’un des quartiers les plus anciens de Tokyo, Shitamachi, où le monde traditionnel est peu à peu envahi par les signes de la modernité.

Entrée libre
Réservation : contact@le-bal.fr

Yutaka Takanashi: Mita, Shiba, 3 minutes photo booth, 5-31-1 Shiba, Minato-ku, 1977, from the series “Machi”