Daido Moriyama is currently exhibited at Foam (Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, until August 23).
Those who are a little bit into Japanese photography will know his work. Daido Moriyama is one of the most important photographers of the 20th century and IMHO his book “Farwell Photography” (1972) is more radical than any western photography book of the beginning 1970s. At the moment I am waiting for a new reprint of “Farwell Photography” and I will write more about it after it has arrived from Japan.
The first visit in one of the big bookstores in Tokyo in search for Japanese photography books can be an overwhelming experience. If you take one of the major bookstores in Tokyo like Kinokuniya at Takashimaya Square in Shinjuku/ Tokyo for example: the store covers several huge floors and the art/ photography/ design department alone is bigger than most bookstores I know.
Even though the different book sections are named in English the language barrier is the major problem for each potential buyer: without a basic ability to read Japanese it almost impossibleto identify any of the hundreds of books in front of you. However, even with the ability to read, withouta basic knowledge of the Japanese photography world it is very hard to find the essential, interesting or unique publications of the recent years – older books cannot be found in this kind of store anyway (I will talk about this later).
After the initial confusion upon entering the empire of signs [I always love to quote Roland Barthes :-)] it becomes evident: the sheer quantity of Japanese photography books is amazing. Even I dont have any hard statistical evidence it is clear that much more photography books are published in Japan than in most (any?) Western countries – without a doubt more than in any European country.
This book took almost a year until it reached Europe, but now it leaves a strong impression on those who have had already the opportunity to see it. Recently Markus my local photo book dealer told me that this book is doing very well and just yesterday a friend from France praised the quality of the photographs published in “A KA RI” by Tamotsu Fujii.Most will not have heard the name of the photographer before, since his work is rarely exhibited or published outside Japan. However in Japan Tamotsu Fujii is well known as a commercial photographer who did advertising photography for major companies like JR East (Japan Railway) or Suntory. Fujii won amongst others the ACC (All Japan Radio and Television Commercial Confederation) Award, Japan’s most prestigious advertising award for commercials, and in 2003 he received the Tokyo Art Directors Club (ACC) award for his Muji campain.
Tamotsu Fujii for Muji
[I have only seen the Muji poster on the web yet, but if someone has one left over at home, don't hesitate to send it to me :-).]
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Last fall the publisher of the bilingual magazine European Photography asked me to write a short review on the book Aoisora Polgasun by Aoi Sora. At that time I had never heard the name of the photographer and a short search on the web revealed that Aoi Sora is not a photographer by profession, but a Japanese idol and porn star, who made a series of self portraits on request of the publisher PowerShovelBooks, a publisher who is involved in Lomo photography.
5 Japanese popular idols are asked to take self-portrait. They are given more than 50 films and few days for it. They are asked to take the cameras with them all the time, anywhere they go and anywhere they are. As if the cameras are their boyfriends or undetestable stalkers. The girls are Nao Oikawa, Aki Hoshino, Rei Ito, Kyouko Nakashima and Sora Aoi. Their mission is to keep on popping shutters until they get sick of doing it.[...]
(Later) we asked Sora to take pictures continuously. We were desperate to see more photographs she takes. Sora was kind and curious enough to take photographs with many cameras we provided, such as BabyHolga, Babylon4, Holga and GR. Most of the photographs taken by Sora with those cameras were very interesting. However, her photographs have been completely changed since she started using POLGA. (You know, POLGA is Holga Polaroid holder for Holga.)
[Quote: Hideki Ohmori/ PowerShovelBooks]
