Product Details Hardcover 216 pages Flammarion Published 2004 Book Description
The Japanese photographers in this volume are the undiscovered Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, or Doiseneau.
From the 1945 bombing of Japan to the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, photography blossomed in the rapidly evolving country. Documentary photography that captured the horrors of war shifted to focus on the human strength for survival and solidarity. By the mid-1950s, Japan was at a crossroads between tradition and modernization, a contradiction immortalized by the most talented photographers of the time.
Chosen for aesthetic merit and content, these 150 photographs are accompanied by essays from renowned Japanese experts, covering historical, social, and photographic perspectives. Three chapters reflect the different periods of this societal transformation and the evolution of Japanese photography from social realism to a subjective and increasingly personal style.
Photographers: Ken Domon, Hiroshi Hamaya, Tadahiko Hayashi, Eikoh Hosoe, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Kikuji Kawada, Ihee Kimura, Shigeichi Nagano, Ikko Narahara, Takeyoshi Tanuma, Shomei Tomatsu
About the Author
Osam Hiraki, independent photography critic and photographic historian, is director of the Photographic Society of Japan. cofounder of the department of photography at the Kawasaki City Museum where he edited and wrote catalogs and articles about the 1950s, he co-edited the Japanese Photography Guide (Nazraeli Press, 1996). In 1998, he curated the world's first "Pulitzer Prize Photography Exhibition."
Alain Sayag, head curator of photography at the National Museum of Art in Paris, has directed several international exhibitions and has published numerous photography books.
Keiichi Takeuchi, professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University in Japan and former director of the Japanese Cultural Institute in Rome, is an authority on the history of geographical thought. |