CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE PHOTOGRAPHY

During my recent trip to Japan, I spent some time browsing the photography aisles of a few fine art book stores in Shibuya. My knowledge of contemporary Japanese photography was quite limited prior to my trip although I was fortunate enough to see an excellent retrospective last year at the International Center of Photography on this very topic.

It also seems that doing a basic internet search does not yield many solid results other than a long, phonetically challenging, alphabetical list of names on Wikipedia and photoguide.jp that, upon first glance, seems quite daunting to dive in to.

The best source that I have found is the well written and regularly updated blog, Japan Exposures.

One series of images that has stayed with me from the ICP exhibition is Asako Narahashi‘s half awake and half asleep in the water- it’s subject drifting further from the shore, a hypnotic meditation which is able to balance a surreal buoyancy with an oppressive sense of aquaphobia:

A contemporary photographer’s work that I was introduced to in Tokyo and greatly admire is that of Nakano Masataka, specifically his Tokyo Nobody series, with its desolate streets and empty intersections capturing an otherworldly stillness and commenting on the impermanence of permanence. With the tranquility comes a slight sense of unease, of trepidation- I am left not thinking of the moment captured but of the moments prior to and post, wondering what happened and what will happen next:

The inverse voyeurism of Masataka-san’s Tokyo Windows series is also of note.

There seems to be a tangible sense of searching and longing to the contemporary Japanese photography that I am drawn to, even a slight sense of melancholia, of isolation. Like trying in vain to capture a fleeting moment that will not come to pass again, trying to impress stasis upon inertia.

Maybe this, in some way, is representative of the dichotomy that is modern day Japan- pre-war traditions, rigidity, and isolationism trying to strike a balance with post-war reality, modernism, and cultural assimilation, especially in regards to the work of the venerable and prolific Daido Moriyama:

In any case, the mood and message is most certainly subjective, but I feel that I can learn from the raw emotion and textured aesthetic inherent to much of contemporary Japanese photography in relation to the often calculated geometry, didacticism, and minimalism that I tend to favor in my work.

In regards to my study of said topic, I am most certainly at the tip of a very large iceberg, or shall I say, at the tip of Mt. Fuji.