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“It’s not enough that [the photograph] is beautiful,” says Kawauchi. “If it doesn’t move my heart, it won’t move anyone else’s heart.”
Time.com

The series will be on view at Hermès, New York, from May 19. Some works from “Illuminance” were exhibited at our gallery last September under the title “A Glimmer in Silence“.

The Historical Book Award and The Contemporary Book Awards
The Historical Book Award goes to the best thematic book or monograph published between 1 June 2009 and 31 May 2010. The Contemporary Book Award goes to the best photography book published between 1 June 2009 and 31 May 2010. The Book Awards winners are chosen by the five Discovery Award nominators, Rencontres d’Arles president Jean-Noël Jeanneney, and LUMA Foundation founder Maja Hoffmann.

Yutaka Takanashi, Photography 1965 – 74
Editors: Roland Angst, Ferdinand Brueggemann, Priska Pasquer
Essays by Ferdinand Brueggmann and Hitoshi Suzuki
Published by Only Photography, Berlin
116 pages, 41 images, Triplex, hardcover, ed. 500
Text: German, English, Japanese
ISBN 978-3-9812537-2-6

As a member of the small Provoke collective, Takanashi was able to find a new theoretical approach and its visual language. The influence of this group and of the magazine on the photographic scene in Japan was immense. In the following years the Provoke photographers produced major works in terms of photographic history, whereby Yutaka Takanashi defined the high point as well as the end of this era with the publication of his first book, Toshi-e (Towards the City), in 1974.

This two-part book set new standards in terms of design, materials and craftsmanship. In a compartment behind the larger volume, Toshi-e, one finds an earlier series in the smaller format volume, Tôkyô-jin; it seems to have provided the basis for the larger book.

Our book, Yutaka Takanashi, Photography 1965–74, presents a representative cross-section of these two pioneering photographic series in 35 full-page illustrations and 6 large format plates. An extensive biography, list of exhibitions and a bibliography round off our newest publication.

The book is available at Only Photography and at Schaden.com. It was published on occasion of the Yutaka Takanashi exhibition at Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne.
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The Historical Book Award went to a book on Japanese photography as well:
“Japanese photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s” by Ryuichi Kaneko and Ivan Vartanian, Aperture 2009.

And a third  book on Japanese photography was honorably mentioned at the prize giving ceremony in Arles:
“Yutaka Takanashi: Toshi-e (Towards the City)“. Books on Books #6, published by Jeffrey Ladd, Errata Editions 2010.

The young women photographer  (born 1985) was awarded the Kimura Ihei Commemorative Photography Award for her two photo books “MID” and “GROUND” and a solo exhibition at TARO NASU gallery.

This award is given to new photographers who achieve outstanding results in creating photos and presentation activities. Because it is the most prestigious award of its kind, it is also referred to as the Akutagawa Award of the photography world. Previous recipients include Mika Ninagawa, Rinko Kawauchi, Taiji Matsue, Masafumi Sanai, Tomoko Sawada, Ryûdai Takano and Lieko Shiga.

Kotaro Iizawa writes about Cozue Takagi’s series “MID”:

The “MID” series is in front of us now. At one time it was called “Mother”. So this group of images which at the first glance seems multifarious, randomly picked and scattered out may, for Cozue, be the “mother”. (…) We should be able to put the complex structure of Cozue´s photographic work into focus.
But this effort quickly gets caught in a labyrinth and arrives at a dead end. The information we’re given is too fragmented. (…)
What is “MID”? It means the midway of something. The midway of what? Cozue immediately replies: “The midway between life and death.”
[Quote: Kotaro Iizawa, in "MID"]

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While “MID” consists of straight photography “GROUND” contains digitally created photo collages (some of them measuring around 3m).

The collages were created by layering images using a computer for to make visible the intricate illusion that weaves reality and fiction together.
[Quote: Tokyo Art Beat]

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Both books “GROUND” and “MID” were published 2009 by Akaaka Art Publishing.

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