![]() ![]() Three years after the cancellation of the Contemporary Photographs shows, the museum mounted Ten Artists of Contemporary Japanese Photography, this time using a different curatorial framework. Ten Artists of Contemporary Japanese Photography exhibition catalogue (1966), cover Each of these nearly annual presentations featured pictures that had been published in magazines or exhibited the preceding year, offering a cross section of the most recent and outstanding developments in the field. Prime examples were the three Contemporary Photographs exhibitions of 1960, 1961, and 1963. ![]() Due to the curators’ broad insights into the field, their exhibitions provided well-balanced overviews of the medium during this period one might call them straightforward expressions of the self-image of the Japanese photography scene, analyzing contemporary movements and highlighting their most representative works rather than addressing particular topics. The committee members were Japan’s most renowned photography critics and editors of leading photography journals-figures who, month by month, browsed the pages of publications dedicated to the art form and wrote critical essays and commentaries, both closely following and shaping current trends. ![]() Instead, up through the time of Fifteen Photographers Today, it nominated curatorial committees of external specialists to determine the content of its photography exhibitions. In those days, the National Museum of Modern Art did not have a curator of photography. All of them prioritized the introduction of contemporary trends. Many focused on Japanese photography specifically, and most centered on work from the postwar era. ![]() In the thirteen years between that presentation and Ten Artists of Contemporary Japanese Photography, the museum held six more photography shows. As indicated by its title, the exhibition united some of the most significant Japanese postwar photography with American works, selected from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The National Museum of Modern Art, founded in 1952 in the Kyobashi area of Tokyo, mounted The Exhibition of Contemporary Photography-Japan and America one year after its establishment. In order to understand the significance of these exhibitions, one must first consider the backdrop. The two presentations together thus highlighted the major trends of nearly fifteen years of Japanese photography-an era that is now regarded as one the most exciting periods for the medium in postwar Japan. The earliest work, shown in Ten Artists of Contemporary Japanese Photography, dated to 1962, while Fifteen Photographers Today included ongoing series published in journals through (and beyond) the year of the exhibition itself. They featured key representatives of the first generation of postwar photographers such as Eikoh Hosoe, Ikko Narahara, Akira Sato, and Shomei Tomatsu-all members of the VIVO group, which sought to renew photographic expression-as well as figures associated with the influential journal Provoke such as Daido Moriyama, Takuma Nakahira, and Yutaka Takanashi. The exhibitions Ten Artists of Contemporary Japanese Photography (July 15–August 21, 1966) and Fifteen Photographers Today (July 26–September 8, 1974), held at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, gathered recent works by artists who played indispensable roles in the development of Japanese photography after World War II. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |