On Japanese photobooks (for auction at Photoeye.com)

Edo Pop - The Grafic Impact of Japanese Prints
Exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Oct 30, 2011 - Jan 8, 2012

Full image titles:

Iona Rozeal Brown, American, born 1966
One for the Money, Two Faux the Show (Still Pimpin’), after Katsukawa Shun’ei’s The Actor Ichikawa Komazo III, 2006
Acrylic, gold leaf on panel

Kitagawa Utamaro, 1753/54–1806
Love for a Farmer’s Wife, 1795–96
Color woodblock print (nishiki-e)

Gajin Fujita, American, born 1972
Crew, 2002
Spray paint, acrylic, and gold leaf on wood

Kabukidō Enkyō, active ca. 1796
Ichikawa Yaozō III as Umeōmaru, 1796
Color woodblock print (nishiki-e)

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”.

Issei Suda: Yokohama, Sankaien Garden, Plum Blossom Festival(from the series: ‘Fushi Kaden’), 1977

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:

“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