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.

Frequently the images contain more or less subtle hints on the radical changes the Japanese economy, society and culture underwent since the end of WWII. Takanashi depicts the Salarymen in their business suits and female shop clerks in company uniforms, who were dominating the center of Tokyo. These Tokyoites were part of the middle class whose expanding income set the base of the expanding consumer culture. And Takanashi show its most visible sign: young middle class families in their first cars.

But Takanashi’s outlook at the Tokyoties isn’t just a simple appreciation of contemporary life in a megacity. Often people seem to be isolated, standing alone in the street or among the masses. And quite often Takanashi shows remnants of the traditional culture which became more and more invisible while the symbols of the American way of life and its leading brands became an essential part of the visual culture in Japan: A child with a Ray Ban sun glasses in front of a temple and or the coca cola logo on the back of the shirt of a baseball player.

All together the flow of the images constructs a multi-layered, complex narration of a city on the move, oscillating between progress and tradition, between local habits and an increasingly internationalized consumer culture.

The “Tokyo-jin” series was very well received in the Japanese photography scene, albeit the presentation in Camera Mainichi magazine must have been looked upon as unsatisfactory: even though the magazine wasn’t of large size, 3-4 images were put on a double page. The consequence of the cramped layout was, that for the reader of the magazine the real quality of the images was only vaguely perceptible.

The hope that this series would later receive an adequate publication was disappointed when Takanashi published it eight years later as part of his two-volume book “Toshi-e” (Towards the City). In “Toshi-e” the “Tokyo-jin” series was again printed in a small size publication, this time roughly printed on cheapish, yellow tinted paper – but it became part of one the most impressive photobooks of the 20th century.

“(Tokyo-jin) was considered Takanashi’s representative work and an important contribution to contemporary Japanese photography. Its publication in book form had been hotly anticipated since the work first appeared in the January 1966 issue of Camera Mainichi. (…) When “Towards the City” was eventually published in 1974, buyers were befuddled and disappointed to find “People of Tokyo” treated like a mere supplement.
[Quote: Rûyichi Kaneko(3)]

I guess that one reason for Takanashi’s decision not to present the series in a more appropriate way was, that in the second half of the 1960s Takanashi became discontent with this kind of subjective documentary photography.

Around 1967/68 Takanashi and other photographers and critics were in search for a new approach on describing reality, they were in search for a new visual “language to come”. Therefore is wasn’t a surprise that in 1968 Yutaka Takanashi became a founding member of the ‘Provoke’ collective, a collective which during its short span of life should change the Japanese photography forever and whose impact can still be traced in Japanese photography today (and in the West as well).

More on Takanashi, Provoke and his book “Toshi-e” (Towards the City) soon in part II

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

On Saturday, May 15, Rinko will give a lecture about her work; her new book we be available as well.

And there will be an exhibition by the young women photographer Lieko Shiga.
Last year Lieko Shiga received the ICP “Infinity Award / Young Photographer” for her series Lilly and in 2008 the “Kimura Ihei Award” for “Lilly” and “Canary”. In Kassel she will exhibit works from her series Canary which I find extremely interesting. I sureley will write more about the artist in the future.

Lieko Shiga on her photography:

Be Shot and Die
… The verb “shoot” is used to describe the action of taking a photograph, but the same word is also used to mean “kill”, therefore to be shot is to be resurrected through the action of killing. I can already visualize the finished photograph when I first encounter the subject or scene, or even before that. The time that exists before the photograph is taken, shoots me where I stand outside, and restores me to life.

The body is simply a medium, I kept a canary inside my stomach.

Look upon people or scenery that have been sacrificed through photography as offerings to the next world.
Lieko Shiga

Lieko Shiga will give a lecture on Sunday, May 16.

By the way, I will give a lecture  too: “Liquid Dreams – Female Japanese contemporary photographers”, May 16.

Artists participating in Kassel:

- Paul Graham
- Rob Hornstra
- Rinko Kawauchi
- Sybren Kuiper
- Joachim Schmid
- Lieko Shiga
- Alec Soth
- Niels Stomps

Beta Rinko is published by BCCKS, Tokyo, and should be available soon.

Recently I had the pleasure to initiate the first solo exhibition of Shomei Tomatsu in Germany, which is currently on show at Galerie Priska Pasquer.

Shomei Tomatsu at Galerie Priska Pasquer Cologne
Exhibition: March 13 – April 17, 2010

Tomatsu’s photographs are examining, in an absolutely personal and unique vision, the changes in the Japanese society since the 1950s. They provide a candid look at the aftereffects of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, the influence of American military and popular culture, and the impact of the post-1960s economic boom in Japan. The exhibition will show a selection of works from late 1950s to the early 1970s.

A self-taught photographer, Shomei Tomatsu went freelance in 1956. In the years that followed, he took part in the pioneering “Eyes of Ten” exhibitions and in 1959 he was one of the co-founders of photographic agency VIVO, which is seen as the ‘epicentre’ of Japanese post-war photography. Other VIVO members included Ikko Narahara and Eikoh Hosoe, both of whom were the subject of individual exhibitions by Galerie Priska Pasquer (Eikoh Hosoe in 2002, Ikko Narahara in 2009/2010).

Shomei Tomatsu’s imagery is noted for its varied and complex nature. His style ranges from works leaning towards classical street photography, symbolically charged objects, abstract (urban) views to dynamic, expressive compositions. Depending on the subject matter, the artist constantly expanded his visual grammar,  creating pictures that walk a tightrope between the concrete and the abstract and between fascination and repulsion, while remaining timeless.

A central theme in Tomatsu’s photographic work is the effects of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Here, he portrays survivors and documents objects from the Atom Bomb Museum. Among the works featured in the exhibition is “Bottle Melted and Deformed by Atomic Bomb Heat, Radiation, and Fire, Nagasaki, 1961”. This photo, which calls to mind a melted body part, is described by Leon Rubinfien as “possibly the single strongest image of his career” (Shomei Tomatsu:  Skin of a Nation, p. 27).

Another theme that has been explored by Tomatsu for more than a decade is the influence of the US occupying forces and of American culture on Japanese society. The “Chewing Gum and Chocolate” series, which was taken near the US military bases, thrives on the ambivalent experience of the Americans as overbearing victors who also brought a new culture to Japan.

However, Tomatsu’s photography deals not only with the unfamiliar but also with the familiar, such as the tension relating to rural traditions and Japan’s journey to urban modernity since the 1950s. In “Flood and Japanese” (1959), Tomatsu demonstrated the effects of floods, in “Protest” the student demonstrations in Tokyo, and in “The Pencil of the Sun” the dwindling popular culture in Okinawa, the group of islands in the south of Japan.

Brief Biography
Born in Aichi, Nagoya in 1930. 1954-56 Photographer at the Iawanami Shashin Bunko publishing house together with Nagano Shigeichi. Participated in the “Eyes of Ten” exhibitions, 1957-59. In 1959, founded photographic agency VIVO together with Kikuji Kawada, Akira Sato, Akira Tanno, Ikko Narahara and Eikoh Hosoe. In the same year, he began to take photographs at the US military bases all over Japan and also the effects of a typhoon that destroyed his mother’s house. Commissioned to work on a book about the dropping of the atom bomb on Nagasaki, together with Domon Ken. 1972-1976 lived in Okinawa. 1974 Founded the “Workshop Photography School”, Tokyo, together with Nobuyoshi Araki, Masahisa Fukase, Eikoh Hosoe, Daido Moriyama and Noriaki Yokosuka. 1995 Awarded the Purple Ribbon Medal by the Japanese government.

Selected exhibitions
1974 New Japanese Photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York
1979 Japan: A Self-Portrait., International Center of Photography, New York
1984 Shomei Tomatsu: Japan 1952-1981, Forum Stadtpark, Graz
1985 Black Sun: The Eyes of Four, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford
1992 Sakura + Plastics, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
1996 Traces: 50 years of Tomatsu’s works, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo
2000 How You Look at It: Photographs of the Twentieth Century, Sprengel Museum Hannover
2004 Interface. Shomei Tomatsu, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
2006 Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
2006 Aichi Mandala: Early Works of Tomatsu Shomei, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya
2007 Tokyo Mandala, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo

Selected publications
- Shomei Tomatsu, Ken Domon, et al: Hiroshima-Nagasaki Document. Tokyo 1961
- 11:02 Nagasaki. Tokyo 1966
- Nippon. Tokyo 1967
- Salaam Aleikum. Tokyo 1968
- Okinawa, Okinawa, Okinawa. Tokyo 1969
- Oh! Shinjuku. Tokyo 1969
- Après-Guerre. Tokyo 1971
- I Am a King. Tokyo 1972
- The Pencil of the Sun. Tokyo 1972
- Kingdom of Mud. Tokyo 1978
- Ruinous Garden. Tokyo 1987
- Sakura, Sakura, Sakura. Osaka 1990
- Tomatsu Shomei 1951-60. Tokyo 2000
- Shomei Tomatsu. Skin of the Nation. San Francisco 2004

photos © Shomei Tomatsu

Asako Narahashi: Jindo, Korea, from the series “Coming Closer and Getting Further Away”, 2009 ©Asako Narahashi

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Recommended Book:
Asako Narahashi: half awake and half asleep in the water