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Some recent activties

Sunday, March 22, 2009 //
12

It’s over a year that I have written at Japan-Photo.info. But is it not because I lost interest in Japanese photography, in contrary, I was so much involved in Japanese photography, that there wasn’t much time nor thoughts left for the blog, unfortunately.

Eikoh Hosoe: Kamaitachi 8, 1965

Some time ago I became director of Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne, were I am responsible for the program of Japanese photography. Already in the years before we had some solo shows with Japanese artists at the gallery: Iwao Yamawaki (Modern photography), Eikoh Hosoe (his first solo show in Germany), Daido Moriyama and Rinko Kawauchi. In the beginning we did not receive much response, but this changed very much in the recent years, because Western curators and private collectors alike became more and more aware of the history of Japanese photography and of the quality of the works coming from Japan.

Osamu Shiihara: Untitled, end 1930s

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Categories Award, Exhibition, Photographer

Rinko Kawauchi: “Utatane” exhibition in Paris

Sunday, April 6, 2008 //
10

Just a short post after a long hiatus, but I hope to post more in the upcoming months.

I know I wrote a few times about Rinko Kawauchi – with whom I had a very pleasant dinner in Tokyo a few weeks ago -, but since this is the first time that her famous series “Utatane” from 2001 is exhibited in a solo show outside Japan, I thought it is worth to mention it.

Rinko Kawauchi “Uatane”, at Art77, presented by Antoine de Vilmorin (until May 3).

Rinko Kawauchi: Untitled (from the series: Uatatane), 2001 ©Rinko Kawauchi

As far as I know there has not been much written about the series and book “Utatane” (in contrary to “Aila”)  and which has lead to Rinko’s national and international breakthrough. For “Utatane” (and for her book “Hanabi” [Fireworks]) the artist received the prestigious Kimura Ihei Award and the book was included in the “The Photobook: A History. Vol. 2″ by Parr and Badger. Badger wrote a very interesting comment on Rinko and “Utatane” in the photobook anthology:

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.

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Categories Award, Exhibition, Photobook, Photographer

Mikiko Hara

Thursday, October 18, 2007 //
6

When I went to Japan in the second half of the 1990s for to research Modern Japanese photography I was fortunate to meet the photographer Eiji Ina who introduced me to the contemporary photography scene in Tokyo. At that time it was nearly impossible for foreigners without a well developed ability to read Japanese (especially names)12 to find out what was going on in Tokyo, since there were no English sources neither about exhibitions nor galleries available and Eiji Ina was so kind to take me to photography events like exhibition openings at galleries and museums or to the award ceremony of the Kimura Ihei Award. He also introduced me to the photographer Mikiko Hara, whom I met for the first time in 1998 at the opening of her exhibition “Agnus Dei” at Nikon Salon, Ginza/Tokyo.

Mikiko Hara: untitled (from the series: Agnus Dei), 1998

A year later I saw Mikiko’s work again in the group exhibition about young Japanese women photographers “Private Room II” at Art Tower Mito. Curated by Kohtaro Iizawa this exhibition was a kind of assessment of the “onna no ko shashinka” (girly photographer) phenomenon which had already faded at that time. I felt that Mikikos work was misplaced in the girly photographer context, since she was a few years older than these ‘girlies’ like Hiromix and Yurie Nagashima. Also Hiromix’s and Nagashima’s main aim was to use the camera for to talk about themselves and to deal with their own identity. Mikiko’s topic is different, she does not speak about herself:

Mikiko Hara: Untitled (from the series: It As Is), 1996

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Notes

  1. ↑1 As an example: when I visited the exhibition “MOBO, MOGA / Modern Boy, Modern Girl: Japanese Modern Art 1910-1935″
  2. ↑2 in Kamakura (1998) all artists names were written in Kanji. Since I find Japanese names very difficult to read I asked other Japanese visitors for the names of some artists. This caused vivid discussions among the Japanese, because the Kanji can have several different readings and sometimes the Japanese could not agree on the correct spelling of the names :-).
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Categories Photobook, Photographer, Photography Market

Japan Underground

Sunday, February 11, 2007 //
1

A few weeks after reading the interview with Joe Nishizawa in Pingmag about his book “Deep Inside” I ordered the book at Amazon.jp. When the book arrived I was surprised to get a completely different book from the seller and I realized that I had mixed up the titles of the books “Deep Inside” by Joe Nishizawa and “Japan Underground” by Hideaki Uchiyama.

Both books deal with the vast and complex underground constructions which provide essential life lines and life support for Japanese mega cities like Tokyo or Osaka. And it seems that this topic is of great interest for Japanese photographers as well as for the Japanese audience. Hideaki Uchiyama already published three volumes of “Japan Underground” (2000, 2003 and 2005) and his first volume was reprinted last year, and Nishizawa’s book created a remarkable buzz in the (international) blogsphere due to the interview in Pingmag. But the best known series about this topic is from a third photographer, Naoya Hatakeyama, who published his series “Underground” in 2000, the year when Nishizawa published his first volume.

Naoya Hatakeyama: “Underground”

Naoya Hatakeyama

I look around but my sight is completely shut out. No light stimulus. My eyes are open but seem closed. Yet my eyeballs keep moving, trying harder to look and see and see, in vain. [...]
I go down to the stream of central Tokyo, surrounded by concrete. This is a humanless world. Only five meters below the ground, it seems to me light-years away. [...]

Naoya Hatakeyama: «Underground», 2003

The mold that grows in a limestone cave hundreds of kilometers away from Tokoy grew, too, in the underground darkness upstream of this river. Is it still there, I wonder? Reflecting my light, it shined like glassware. But it remains unaware of how beautiful it is.
Quote: Naoyama Hatakeyama, “Underground”

Hideaki Uchiyama: “Japan Underground”

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