Archives for category: Photographer

After Fukushima #1

Sunday, March 11, 2012 //

On March 11, 2011 the photographer Koichiro Tezuka was in a helicopter on the way back from Aomori prefecture, North Japan, to Tokyo. While in the air a magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit the Pacific coast of Tôhoku. It was almost probably the strongest earthquake since 1.000 years. The earthquake caused surprisingly minor damage considering the magnitude of the quake.

Koichiro Tezuka immediately began to photograph the earthquake damages, but soon they had to do a stopover at Sendai Airport, Miyagi Prefecture for to refuel the helicopter. But the airport, located very close to the sea was closed due to the earthquake.

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Tags Koichiro Tezuka

Categories Photographer

On Yutaka Takanashi, part I: Towards Tokyo

Monday, June 21, 2010 //

In 1966 Yutaka Takanashi published a 36 pages long spread with 43 photographs introducing his new series titled “Tokyo-jin”, a title which is usually translated as “Tokyoites” or “People of Tokyo”. The series was published in the magazine Camera Mainichi – a photo magazine which was essential documenting contemporary currents in the Japanese photography scene.(1)

Photographed 1964-65 “Tokyo-jin” concentrates on the inhabitants of the mega city Tokyo. At that time Tokyo had overcome the severe destructions of World War II and new centers for consumption, mass- and avant-garde culture had emerged, now mainly concentrated in Shinjuku and Shibuya.(2) Takanashi’s series shows people in public spaces, in the streets, at department stores, commuting to work – like the fantastic image of an overcrowded subway train -, or spending leisure time together.

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Notes

↑1 Camera Mainichi, 1966, no. 1. In the magazine the title “Tokyo-jin” was translated as “Tokyo Man”. The editor of Camera Mainichi, Shôji Yamagishi, co-curated in 1974 the seminal exhibition on Japanese photography at the MOMA, see the post on John Szarkowski, 2007.
↑2 Before WWII Ginza and Asakusa were the heart of the avant-garde culture and Western influenced modernity. You can find a color video from 1935 on Ginza and Asakusa in a 2007 post. Today Asakusa is seen as representing the ‘old’ Tokyo. See for example my post on Hiroh Kikai from 2006.

Tags Yutaka Takanashi

Categories Photobook, Photographer

Rinko Kawauchi, Lieko Shiga exhibitions, lectures at Photobook Festival Kassel, Germany

Sunday, May 9, 2010 //

Next week Rinko Kawauchi will join the 3. International Photobook Festival in Kassel, Germany, where she will exhibit works from her series “Utatane” (2001).
I have already written about Rinko here and here, therefore today just my favourite quote about “Utatane”:

Just when it seems that everything has been photographed, in every possible way, along comes a photographer, whose work is so original that the medium is renewed. Such a photographer is Rinko Kawauchi, who makes simple, lyrical pictures, so fresh and unusual that they are difficult to describe or classify. Her images documentary everyday things, yet could not be described as documentary. They are generally light in tone, yet somehow dark in mood. They are almost hallucinatory, yet seem to capture something fundamental about the psychological mood of modern life.
Garry Badger