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Farewell Photography The Hitachi Collection of Postwar Japanese Photographs, 1961-1989
THE RADICAL NEW VISION OF POST-WAR JAPANESE PHOTOGRAPHY BREAKING W I T H TRADITION
THROUGH JUNE 26, 2022 NORTON GALLERY By the conclusion of World War II, photography was no stranger to Japan. Long before it would be used to capture images of a nation ravaged by war and nuclear destruction, photography had come to Japan as early as 1848, when the daguerreotype camera was first imported to the island nation.
For much of Japan’s early photographic history, the medium served as a tool for documentation; portraiture and objective, journalistic-style photography was the rule of the day. However, nearly a hundred years after the first photographs were taken in Japan, the nation would experience a profound shift, not only in the availability of mass-produced camera equipment of the post-war industrial age, but in its style, mood, and aesthetic. Just as war and modernization had forever changed the face of the nation, the trauma of war, the cultural impact of occupation, and the democratization of affordable camera equipment would change the face of Japanese photography forever. The newest photography exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum, drawn from the collection of the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, explores the revolutionary, postwar period of Japanese photography. Entitled Farewell
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Photography: The Hitachi Collection of Postwar Japanese Photographs, 1961-1989, drawn from iconic photographer Daidō Moriyama’s seminal 1972 photobook, the exhibition features dozens of photographers of the postwar period who helped establish a new approach to photography known as are-bure-bokeh: rough, blurry, out-of-focus. Through an exploration of works by Moriyama, Masahisa Fukase, Shōmei Tōmatsu, Miyako Ishiuchi, and many other artists of the period, visitors can discover not only the edgier, intense mood and aesthetic of the postwar period, but a significant shift in subject matter, toward a more personal and intimate focus that tells the story of a people and a nation in a period of post-traumatic transition. The collection featured at Phoenix Art Museum were first acquired by the Center for Creative Photography in the late 1980s, due in large part to a grant from the Hitachi Corporation. Farewell Photography offers the first opportunity to see this collection together in more than 30 years. While the roots of are-bure-bokeh begin almost immediately after the conclusion of World War II during a time of recovery from the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the CCP’s collection, and thus Farewell Photography itself, delves most deeply into what is sometimes referred to as the Provoke period of contemporary Japanese photography, spanning the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The term comes from a magazine of the same name first published in the 1960s, and founded by photographers Yutaka Takanashi and Tukama Nakahira, as well as critics and writers who were close associates. The exhibition also calls to mind the seminal 1974 exhibition, New Japanese Photography, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, which enticed Western audiences into taking note of the groundbreaking work and distinct perspective of contemporary Japanese photographers working in the period. Farewell Photography explores the work of this era through sections dedicated to individual artists of the period, each of whom vary in subject matter and style. Rather than exploring specific commonalities and themes, visitors instead journey through the decades, and enjoy an intimate experience with each featured photographer, studying a small assemblage of works that typify the artists’ aesthetic and experience, and the subjects of their work run the gamut. One of the first collection of works visitors encounter is the moody natural photographs of Hiroshi Yamazaki, born just after the end of the war and who passed away in 2017. Yamazaki, who was formally trained in photography at Nihon University, became entranced with the role that both light and exposure play, and his body of work delved deeply into images of the sun and sea. The result is a series of black-and-white images of the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Japan, among others, entitled The Sun is Longing for the Sea. An amalgam of light and shadow in which it becomes nearly impossible to separate the sky, the shore, and the sea from each other, through the images, marked by a narrow white rectangle of the rising sun, Yamazaki creates a world shorn entirely of destruction, conflict, and the frailty of humankind, leaving us only with a glimpse at a near primordial view of the elements. This sparse loneliness is echoed in the work of Miyako Ishiuchi, the only woman featured in the exhibition, and a pivotal figure in the heavily male-dominated field of Japanese photography. The works included in this exhibition are drawn from Ishiuchi’s Yokosuka Story (1976-1977) series, intended to be a photographic essay of Ishiuchi’s hometown which was dominated by a U.S. military base, and another series, Apartment (1977-1978), which reflects on the very basic, workaday housing of postwar Japan, in which she grew up. In one image, a young girl runs through an urban alleyway, devoid of any adults, and only the ramshackle remnants of urban life, all cast in the harsh light of the afternoon sun. The child, whose face is out of focus, whose presence in the image seems unplanned and happenstance, appears to be running alone, untethered, free, and most of all, unsecured. Her tiny, distorted shadow seems to underscore her vulnerability, her overexposure to this place marked by the air of hardened industry. Despite her smile and the gaiety of her movements, the photograph captures a sense of danger and dread. This similar sense of danger and dread that is, in some ways, incongruous with the subject matter is echoed again in Kikuchi Kawada’s work. A self-taught photographer, Kawada worked as a freelance photographer, focusing in part on both the traumas of World War II and scenes of everyday life in Tokyo that capture the subtle disquietude of the postwar city. This is seen best, perhaps, in his Wedding Veil, Tokyo, 1968. The bride wears a Western-style white tulle veil, a departure from traditional Japanese wedding garments, and her face is obscured in shadow, the gossamer veil lit from the sun to the left. She holds up a single hand as if to signal at someone to stay back, not to draw too close. Kawada manages to capture a moment in the midst of what should be a celebration, but instead feels heavy, dark, and ultimately, lonely. Similarly, his 1975 photograph, The Youth Who Pilots a Glider, Tokyo, 1975, features a teenage boy, wearing what resembles a Western-style letterman’s jacket, enclosed in the glass cockpit of a small glider. The framing of the image crops out the wings and other aerial aspects of the
credits image silver print. Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Gift of the artist. © Ikko Narahara; , 1974. Gelatin silver print. Center for Creative New Couple Who Closed Their Eyes, Tokyo Kikuji Kawada, Photography, University of Arizona: Purchase, with matching funds from Hitachi America, Ltd. © Kikuji Farewell Photography: The Hitachi Collection of Postwar Japanese ) Installation view, 29
page Kawada. ( Yurio Hasegawa (Japanese), ) Taku Aramasa, 30
page , 2022, Phoenix Art Museum. ( Photographs, 1961-1989 , 1984. Gelatin silver print. Center for Creative Zenji Watanabe (Japanese), Harunaga Hasegawa (Japanese) Photography, University of Arizona: Purchase, with matching funds from Hitachi America, Ltd. © AMARASA , 1988. Gelatin silver print. Center for Creative Photography, Irouzaki ) Kozo Miyoshi, 31
page Taku. ( University of Arizona: Purchase, with matching funds from Hitachi America, Ltd. © Kozo Miyoshi. glider, leaving the viewer with an image that more closely resembles a teenage boy in a coffin, eyes closed, calling to mind images of the war dead. While much of the work clearly references and hints at the impact of World War II and nuclear weaponry on postwar Japan, some of the works include a more direct mention of those effects. The featured works by photographer Shōmei Tōmatsu, drawn in part from his photobook Hiroshima-Nagasaki Document 1961, delve deeply into the impact of nuclear war on the people and nation, as seen through images that depict everyday objects twisted and warped by the blast. In Melted Beer Bottle after the Atomic Explosion, 1945, Nagasaki, (1961) the visitor is witness to an unrecognizable, amorphous shape, mutated glass warped by the intense heat of the bomb, now resembling the eerie, repulsive outline of a human body part that cannot be identified. Whatever the visitor sees in this exhibition, they will bear witness to a revolutionary departure from the origins of photography in Japan to a more personal perspective into a world that was lost in war, and the new world that took its place. Each of the artists, by stepping away from technical proficiency, releasing their own cultural inhibitions, and embracing a new aesthetic that prioritized the personal over the perfect, expressed an uncanny bravery, a profound courage to reinvent what photography could mean in the new Japan. In many ways, this bravery, this willingness to confront difficult subject matter, to tell the whole truth about the world around them, has lessons for all of us today, as we face the challenges of our own troubled times. “I hope this exhibition introduces viewers to this special group of photographers who represented a radical new vision,” said Audrey Sands, PhD, the Museum’s former Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography, who co-curated this exhibition with her colleague, Andrew Monohon, an independent curator who formerly served as a curatorial assistant at the Center for Creative Photography. “I want to highlight how provocative this style was during a loaded and controversial political moment in Japan. I want to broaden the view beyond the North American-centric story of the history of modern photography, to look at this extraordinary rich and edgy cultural output, and the ways in which photography was used for protest. To have a more global understanding of this period of social unrest and of a generation that challenged governments and societal norms is, I think, a critical vocabulary for all of us to better understand our own time.”
Farewell Photography: The Hitachi Collection of Postwar Japanese Photographs, 19611989 is organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. It is made possible through the generosity of the John R. and Doris Norton Center for Creative Photography Endowment Fund, with additional support from the Museum’s Circles of Support and Museum Members.
