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

Ikko Narahara – Photographs from the 1950s to the 1970s

It’s the first solo exhibiton of Ikko Narahara´s work in Germany and the first time that his vintage prints from the 60s and 70s are on show in a gallery.

Ikko Narahara, born in 1931 in the Fukuoka Prefecture was self taught photographer. The response to his first (one week) solo exhibition in Tokyo’s only photo gallery was so positive that he decided to become a photographer. Soon after he took part in the groundbreaking photography exhibition ‘The Eyes of Ten’ in Tokyo in 1957. Two years later he became one of the co-founders of the legendary photo agency VIVO (in collaboration with Shomei Tomatsu, Eikoh Hosoe, Kikuji Kawada, and others), which was to be the epicenter for a new generation of Japanese photographers.

In his early work Narahara focused on people who were living in isolation from the everyday world, such as monks in a Trappist monastery or the inmates of a women’s prison. His work aimed at creating a ‘personal document’, he aspired to ‘a process of laying bare the inner form by thoroughly depicting the exterior’ (Ikko Narahara).

Walking a tightrope between description and abstraction, objectivity and a personal narrative, Narahara transcended the journalistic documentary photography then prevalent in Japan. Furthermore, Narahara displayed a particular facility for abstraction and the staging of everyday scenes in strict graphic compositions as in, for example, the series ‘Tokyo, the ‘50s’, which was only to be published in 1996.

The beginning of the 1960s and the 1970s were dominated by long stays abroad. From 1962 to 1965 Ikko Narahara took photographs in France, Spain and Italy. The results are picture essays in which Narahara evokes the ‘old continent’ within a timeless narrative, a fiction in which time has come to a standstill. Accordingly, one of his contemporary books was appropriately titled ‘Where Time Has Stopped’.

Following Ikko Narahara’s return to Japan, his previous confrontation with Europe then led to an increased interest in the particulars of his own culture. Photographic series, such as ‘Zen’ (published in the book ‘Japanesque’) were the consequence, in which the aspect of timelessness was also addressed.

At the beginning of the 1970s Ikko Narahara went to the USA. This was the location of his best-known series ‘Where Time Has Vanished’. During extensive trips across the country he photographed the mythic sites of the American Dream, vast landscapes, Indian reservations, automobiles, motels and casinos. In contrast to his fellow photographers Gary Winogrand and Robert Adams, Narahara did not take a critical approach to the American scene. Ikko Narahara’s photography is primarily poetic with surreal elements, such as the shot “Two garbage cans, Indian Village, New Mexico” in which Narahara found the fantastic and absurd in small-town America.

Time coming to a standstill is no longer the subject here, but rather the disappearance of time within a mythic space: ‘As I drove across the land in Arizona and Utah and New Mexico, I began to have hallucinations that this was not the earth at all and that I had been thrown onto some other planet’ (Ikko Narahara).

In 1974, his final year in New York, Ikko Narahara took part in the first exhibition of ‘New Japanese Photography’ at the Museum of Modern Art. Since then his work has been shown in countless exhibitions, amongst others: ‘Japan: A Self-Portrait’, ICP, New York 1979; ‘Ikko Narahara. Photographies 1954-2000′, Maison Européene de la Photographie, Paris 2002 and ‘The History of Japanese Photography’, Houston 2004.
[Quotes: Galerie Priska Pasquer]

Ikko Narahara, selected publications:

• Where Time Has Stopped. Tokyo 1967
• Espana Grand Tarde. Japan 1969
• Japanesque. Tokyo 1970
• Celebration of Life. Tokyo 1972
• Where Time Has Vanished. Tokyo 1975
• Domains (Ôkoku). Tokyo 1978
• Venice – Nightscapes. Tokyo 1985
• Human Land. Tokyo 1987
• Tokyo, the ‘50s. Tokyo 1996
• Stateless Land – 1954. Tokyo 2004

John Szarkowski, a curator who almost single-handedly elevated photography’s status in the last half-century to that of a fine art, making his case in seminal writings and landmark exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, died in on Saturday in Pittsfield, Mass. He was 81.
[Quote: New York Times Obituary]

American Photography

As the New York Times points out John Szarkowski “was first to confer importance on the work of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand” and two of his books, “‘The Photographer’s Eye,’ (1964) and ‘Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures From the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art’ (1973), remain syllabus staples in art history programs.” Szarkowski also introduced the work by William Eggleston in the now legendary exhibition “William Egglestons Guide” (1976). This exhibition “was widely considered the worst of the year in photography.”

New Japanese Photography

John Szarkowski left definitely his mark in the field of American photography, but not only there. In 1974 John Szarkowski organized together with Shôji Yamagishi (editor of Camera Mainichi magazine) the exhibition “New Japanese Photography”. The exhibition introduced 15 photographers, amongst them the grand masters of Japanese photography: Ken Domon, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Shomei Tomatsu, Kikuji Kawada, Masatoshi Naitoh, Tetsuya Ichimura, Hiromi Tsuchida, Masahisa Fukase, Ikko, Eikoh Hosoe, Daido Moriyama, Ryoji Akiyama, Ken Ohara, Shigeru Tamura and Bishin Jumonji.
It was the first major exhibition about contemporary Japanese photography outside Japan ever.

Immediate Experience

Besides the excellent selection of artists and photographs the cataloge to the exhibiton with two short essays by John Szarkowski and Yôji Yamagishi laid the groundwork for the reception of Japanese photography of the 1960s and 1970s.

In his essay John Szarkowski formulated within one paragraph the foundation for all later interpretations of this epoch of Japanese photography:

The quality most central to recent Japanese photography is its concern for the description of immediate experience: most of these picture impress us not as a comment on experience, or as a reconstruction of it into something more stable and lasting, but as an apparent surrogate for experience itself, put down with a surely intentional lack of reflection.
[Quote: John Szarkowski]

And Yôji Yamagishi described a major difference of the Japanese photographic practice of that time:

Contemporary Japanese photographers have values which seems distinct from those of the photographers of the West. They are, for example, not particularly interested in the quality of the finished print. [...] Japanese photographers have only a limited opportunity to present their original prints to the public. (Nor do they have the opportunity to sell their pictures to public or private collections.) [...] Japanese photographers usually complete a project in book form, joining in series a number of photographs related by a common subject, theme, or idea. The full value or impact of such work cannot be understood if individual pictures are isolated from the series for exhibitions on the walls of a museum. To do this deprives the photographs of their intended relationship to those which preceded or followed them in the series. In addition, the photographs were originally made to be reproduced in print form, in books and magazines, and not to be displayed a part of an exhibition. It is therefore almost impossible to present a precise and objective picture of the complexities of Japanese photography in an exhibition format.
[Quote: Shôji Yamagishi]

Neither Mirror nor Window

Both essays and especially the two quoted paragraphs are asking for to be commented and evaluated from todays perspective. I just would like to note that Szarkowski and Yamagishi opened for the first time the window to another continent of photography and they established the fact that the Japanese visual artists developed a unique way of describing the world with the medium photography. A photography which was neither interested in being a mirror (“”mirrors”-pictures that mean to describe the photographer’s own sensibility”) nor a window (“”windows”-realist photos of fact, including the facts of photography seen as a system. In short, the romantic vs. the realist”),The explanation in brackets is a quote from Robert Hughe’s review on John Szarkowski’s exhibition “Mirrors and Windows” for Time Magazine (1978) but which was direct, radikal, unfiltered emotional and at times raw and dirty.

An Extraordinary Anthology of Photographic Images

This exhibition belongs definitely to John Szarkowski’s landmark exhibitions and this was already asserted by N. Y. Time’s critic Hilton Kramer:

This is, by any standard, an extraordinary anthology of photographic images. [...]
It is perhaps most extraordinary in the way it addresses itself to the rapid and radical changes that have overtaken Japanese life in this tumultuous period. Pictures such as Ryoji Akiyama’s “TV Frame Left in a Reclamation Area, Tokyo” (1970) and Hiromi Tuschida’s untitled photograph of a country picnic (1969) places us so firmly in the present that we can never again quite think of Japan in terms of the old romantic images.
Even more powerful – but powerful in an oddly esthetic rather than documentary fashion – are Shomei Tomatsu’s pictures of victims suffering various disease and physical disfigurements as the results of the atomic blasts that ended World War II. Yet rivaling these pictures in imaginative grotesquerie are the bizarre, erotic “inventions” of Eikoh Hose entitled “Killed by Roses” (1963), which bring a kind of cinematic freedom to the still medium.
[Quote: Hilton Kramer, New York Times, 1974]

Impact

For the curators (and collectors) of the 1970s and later the exhibition could have served as a guide book into at that time uncharted waters for to produce great shows and/or to start a leading collection of contemporary Japanese photography (of course it would have cost almost nothing to set up such a collection) – but nothing much happened in the two following decades. A reason could be that even though critics like Hilton Kramer found the exhibition extraordinary, he and others missed the focal point and real value of the show: while John Szarkowski and Shôji Yamauchi emphasized the distinction between Japanese and Western photography, Kramer’s final conclusion pointed in the opposite direction.

It will not do, I think, to try to discern a specific Japanese esthetic at work in this exhibition. What, if anything, dominates the eshetic spirit of the show is a sense of dialogue – sometimes harmonious, sometimes no – between Japanese and Western sensibilities.
[Quote: Hilton Kramer, New York Times, 1974]

There were some singular follow ups to “New Japanese Photography” like the exhibition “Japan: A Self-Portrait” organized by Shôji Yamagishi for the International Center of Photography in New York (1979), but just as with the William Eggleston exhibition John Szarkowski was ahead of his time.