Hiroyo Kaneko

Hiroyo Kaneko has just been awarded the 2009 Santa Fe Prize for Photography for her series Sentimental Education. The series is a study of her family bathing in Japan's sento (public baths). I was taken with the simplicity and directness of these images, which feel contemplative without being overly lyrical.

It is interesting to see that at least two young Japanese photographers are receiving plaudits for their work around the family (Asashi Masada recently won the excellent Kimura Ihee Award for his 2008 book in which he cleverly reworked the idea of the traditional family portrait). In an age when the institution of the Japanese family is said to be in freefall, it is interesting to see that, in some photographic quarters at least, it is alive and well.

Osamu James Nakagawa

The Japanese-American photographer Osamu James Nakagawa has just been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to support his work on the Banta and Gama series. With Banta, Nakagawa explores the scars of the Pacific War opposing Japan to America on the cliffs of the island of Okinawa. I was intrigued by the format (which doesn't translate well on a screen) and the fact that these seemingly classic landscape photographs have been "digitally-manipulated" (I would be interested to know how).

Review: First Doubt

"Postmodern interjection, intervention, and manipulation practiced by the society at large have made the image evident more as an artifice than a true recital of the outside world. That makes me happy." Allan Chasanoff

This quote gives you an idea of the thread that runs through First Doubt, Optical Confusion in Modern Photography, an exhibition held at the Yale University Arts Gallery from October 2008 until January 2009. I didn't make it to New Haven to see the show, but Joshua Chang sent me a copy of the catalogue for helping out with a Tomatsu image, and it has since become one of my favourite photo-books of 2008.

The exhibition was based on the collection donated to Yale by Chasanoff and it covers some pretty diverse territory: portraits, abstracts, landscapes, street photography, and more, from early twentieth century to the mid-1990s. The work is mainly American (many of the big names are present: Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, André Kertész, William Klein), but there is also a healthy representation of Japanese material (Naoya Hatakeyama, Ryuji Miyamoto, Tomio Sieke, Isami Shiroma, Shomei Tomatsu, and Shikanosuke Yagaki).

One of the classic images of postwar Japanese photography is on show here, Tomatsu's Beer Bottle After the Atomic Explosion. A friend of mine wrote her PhD thesis on the differences between Domon Ken and Shomei Tomatsu's photographs of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively. I have to admit that I didn't make it through all 200 pages, but I completely agree with her basic premise. Domon's images of Hiroshima survivors, particularly of skin transplant operations, were so brutally direct, that they become almost impossible to look at. There is no doubt that the horror of the bombings is conveyed, but they leave me no time to digest their meaning. Tomatsu's treatment on the other hand was indirect, using symbolism to evoke the bombings and the horror of their impact. As you are drawn in to the photographs to decipher what is happening, the space that this creates gives more time for the image to settle and to resonate. Tomatsu's Beer Bottle is the perfect example of that, and for me it is infinitely more powerful and permanent than any of the most brutally direct images of the human and physical devastation of the aftermath of Hiroshima.

What ties the images in First Doubt together is Chasanoff's remarkable eye for the optically confusing image. These are not immediately 'legible' photographs, they all require some mental gymnastics before you can figure out what is going on. Despite the diversity of the material, there is a remarkable coherence here that comes from the resonance between the images. This is one of the strongest overviews I have seen of the optical experimentation in twentieth century photography, and for all the analog purists out there, a testament to how much can be done with a camera and some light.

The book design and typesetting is appropriately clean and simple, given the complexity of these images, and it is beautifully printed (in Connecticut!). The texts by Stephen Zucker and Joshua Chang are both good, and I particularly enjoyed Chasanoff's text, which gives an insight into the incredibly inquisitive and provocative mind of the man who put this collection together.

Rating: Highly recommended

First Doubt, Optical Confusion in Modern Photography (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 2008, hardcover, 220 pages, 94 colour and mononchrome plates).

Forward Thinking Museum

I recently discovered the JGS Forward Thinking Museum, an online virtual museum that is run by the not-for-profit, Joy of Giving Something. It is a pretty quirky experience, complete with the voice of a guy selling hot dogs on the street corner, robots in wheelchairs, abseiling window-cleaners, laid off bankers trying to hitch a ride home and much more. The navigation is a little clunky because of all these elements, but the depth of material on show makes it worth an extended visit. I think that JGS is involved with Nazraeli Press as a lot of the artists that they have published can be found in the museum. The thing I enjoyed most was the 'permanent exhibitions' on show here. Japanese photography is often absent from the internet, and I was delighted to find a great selection of work here by some of the more interesting contemporary Japanese artists including Naoya Hatakeyama, Eiji Ina, Yuki Onodera, Toshio Shibata, Risaku Suzuki and Masao Yamamoto. As an added bonus, there is a section of the museum called FTM Theater with a selection of short films on the artists at work. I will be a regular visitor.

Review: Shigeichi Nagano, Hong Kong Reminiscence 1958

I have just started a series of reviews of recent Japanese photobooks for the great online photography magazine, lensculture. The first review is of Shigeichi Nagano's latest, Hong Kong Reminiscence 1958 (Tokyo: Sokyu-sha, 2009). You can read the review here.

Update: It seems like the guys at Japan Exposures picked up on my review. If you want to get a copy of the book (they have signed copies too), their site is a good bet.