JAPAN

Takashi Kawashima: Transcending the Real, Digital Alchemy

from New Coast, And a Fragment of a Woman, (2013) It all happened in a second. With the rumbling of a great sound. On the next day, it was snowing, and people were freezing in cold recalling that scene… By Sunil Shah, ASX, September 2015 The story starts from greeting a woman. Recording #1 23’ […]

Akiko Takizawa @ Unseen: “Nocturnal Grievance”

Knowing that she was about to die, my aunt said that she would have less regret about leaving this world if she knew she could still send letters.   There was a certain burden of hearing the small metal chain swing against the glass casing of the light bulb’s pulsating dissonance. Clink, clink, the third […]

Araki Loves Polaroids

“The time when a picture is taken is like an emotion, it’s like a sexual encounter. It’s like a fuck! So, timing is very important.”

Seiji Kurata: Shashin Workshop No. 8 1976

            Excerpts from “Shashin Workshop No. 8.” Japan: Shashin Workshop Group, 1976, First Edition, PB, 72 pp, 28 x 14 cm, b/w photos, text in Japanese. Nobuyoshi ARAKI, Daido MORIYAMA, Shomei TOMATSU, Noriaki YOKOSUKA, Masahisa FUKASE, Eikoh HOSOE, Seiji KURATA, editors/photographers A rare volume from the scarce Photography Workshop Group founded […]

Anton Corbijn on Kohei Yoshiyuki’s ‘The Park’ series 1971–9

“The images are far more erotic than most porno photographs…”   By Anton Corbijn, for Tate, May 2010 I had not been aware of Kohei Yoshiyuki’s work until I saw a review of his series The Park about two years ago, which was accompanied by a photograph that caught my eye immediately. The infrared grittiness […]

Araki’s Chiro, Yoko, Death and the Baring of a Soul

  In Sentimental Journey and later in Winter Journey Araki documented both the intimate and the mundane from his honeymoon and his wife’s terminal battle with cancer. By blurring the boundaries between life and art Araki’s work becomes uncomfortably candid, presenting death with a reverence as shocking and graphic as any of his more erotic […]

ISSEI SUDA: “NITIZYOU”

  Issei Suda was born in Tokyo in 1940 and graduated from the Tokyo College of Photography in 1962. He worked as a freelance photographer from 1971 and taught for many years at the Osaka University of Arts. (All rights reserved. @ Issei Suda.)

All Women Fall in Love with Nobuyoshi Araki (And Duchamps is a Swindler) (2014)

‘Chiro’ from Sentimental Journey @ Araki In many ways, “Sentimental Journey 1972-1992” is quintessential Araki. It is a documentary of his marriage life with his wife Aoki Yoko till the day she lost her fight to ovarian cancer in 1990. By Zhuang Wubin, epSITE and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, 2004 Nobuyoshi Araki, or Tensai […]

INTERVIEW: “Just Float. A Conversation with Mayumi Hosokura”

from KAZAN @ Mayumi Hosokura Just float. A conversation with Mayumi Hosokura By Karin Bareman A young woman sniffles and wipes her nose with her hand. The gesture is utterly disarming. It makes her look so young, so vulnerable. But what on earth is she doing out there? Has she injured herself by moving through […]

Juergen Teller – “Araki Teller Teller Araki” (2014)

April 4, 2014, Galerie OstLicht: opening ceremony of the show ARAKI TELLER TELLER ARAKI featuring works of two of the most important photographers of our times: Juergen Teller and Nobuyoshi Araki. The exhibition is showing new works conceived for this joint exhibition and entering into an artistic dialogue. Nobuyoshi Araki and Juergen Teller are united […]

ROMAIN SLOCOMBE: “CITY OF BROKEN DOLLS”

  “MY WORK’S NOT ONLY ABOUT MY OBSESSION WITH JAPANESE WOMEN, IT’S ABOUT MEDICAL FETISHISM AND MY FASCINATION WITH ACCIDENTS” – ROMAIN SLOCOMBE, 1997   Beautiful Japanese girls are photographed in casts and bandages, victims of unknown traumas in the neon streets and hospital rooms. These are the “broken dolls” of Romain Slocombe’s Tokyo, a […]

Nagano Shigeichi: “Nagano’s Tokyo” (2014)

By Caille Milner, for ASX, May 2014 Why does Tokyo look so unfamiliar in Nagano Shigeichi’s photographs? He used no slights of hand; followed no special methodology. His influences were the usual ones for his generation — William Eugene Smith, Life magazine, celebrated Japanese photojournalists like Kimura Ihei and Fujimoto Shihachi. He didn’t have pretentions […]

Daido Moriyama – “Labyrinth” (2012)

Honesty and reality are the wrong type of word to describe the work of a man with a camera. Labyrinth especially is not photography representing reality, but photography representing photography.

Daido Moriyama: “Tights and Lips”

  One of the most revered living Japanese photographers, Daido Moriyama’s work is saturated with the melancholic beauty of life at its most ordinary. His photographs epitomize wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic of finding beauty in imperfection. Moriyama focuses in on the lost and the discarded, and finds echoes of living through the breakdown of traditional […]

Daido Moriyama – “Reaching Out the Senses” (2012)

Daido Moriyama first came to prominence in the mid-1960s with his gritty depictions of Japanese urban life. His intense and intimate approach often incorporates high contrast, graininess, and tilted vantages to convey the fragmentary nature of modern realities. Born in Ikeda, Osaka, Daido Moriyama first trained in graphic design before taking up photography. Moving to […]

Rinko Kawauchi – “Ametsuchi” (2013)

“On the ground of one of the stars among the immense universe, I think of the beginning, The Earth is a mirror to project heaven. Photography captures the mirror. It connects the Earth and heaven. When the darkness reaches at the bottom, the light will arrive.” – Rinko Kawauchi   Rinko Kawauchi – Ametsuchi By Sören Schuhmacher for ASX, September […]

Eihoh Hosoe: “Photographs”

“To me photography can be simultaneously both a record and a mirror or window of self-expression… the camera is generally assumed to be unable to depict that which is not visible to the eye and yet, the photographer who wields it well can depict what lies unseen in his memory.” – Eikoh Hosoe ASX CHANNEL: […]

Eikoh Hosoe – “Photographer” (2011)

Eikoh Hosoe, a leading figure in modern Japanese photography came to the Art Gallery of NSW to launch the exhibition ‘Eikoh Hosoe: theatre of memory’. In this video he discusses his work and inspirations. Eikoh Hosoe was born in Yonezawa, Yamagata in 1933 and graduated from Tokyo College of Photography in 1951. He exhibited in […]

An Interview with Koji Onaka (2013) – Drifting Free on a ‘Twin Boat’

  “The suburbs don’t change at the same pace of cities. Some of the places I visited twenty years ago will look the same way today. I’m not interested in crowds, so it’s more conducive to my working habits to be in the suburbs.”   Vladimir Gintoff interviews Koji Onaka for ASX. May 2013, at […]

DAIDO MORIYAMA: “BYE BYE PHOTOGRAPHY” (1972)

Bye Bye Photography. The photographer’s third book: a masterpiece of Japanese photography, and the book that best illustrates the conceptual ideals and vision of the Provoke photographers. Here Moriyama pushes the boundaries of the medium: assembling images from a variety of sources, placing them in a tumultuous and discordant anti-sequence, and assaulting the viewer with […]

NOZOMI IJIMA: “SCOFFING PIG”

  “SCOFFING PIG”  豚が嗤う I grew up in a house caught between a cow shed and a pigsty, within the calls of livestock the smells of grain and dung. My parents worked there everyday, often injuried from the kicks of cows. When I was an elementary school student, my classmates came to visit my farm […]

LIEKO SHIGA: “Canary”

In ‘Canary’, personal stories from people of local myths are combined with the artist, Lieko Shiga’s, own personal memories, feelings and experiences to tell hybrid tales of shared secrets, darkness and legend. (© Lieko Shiga, courtesy Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne)

ASX.TV: Takashi Murakami – “Arhat” (2013)

Having been long-time admirers of Takashi Murakami and, at the same time, given countless opportunities to extensively cover his prolific works of art, there was no doubt that we wouldn’t be there for the opening of Murakami’s “Arhat” exhibition and world premier of his film, “Jellyfish Eyes.” Taking place at Blum & Poe Los Angeles, […]

Daido Moriyama – “The Silk Screen Workshop” (2012)

  On December 15th, 2012, Polka Galerie had the honour to host Daido Moriyama for an extraordinary event: The Silkscreen Workshop. During an entire afternoon, the Japanese master, who came to Paris especially for this, helped the workshop participants create a silkscreen. In an atmosphere reminiscent of a factory, the “apprentice-for-a-day” chose one of five […]

Issei Suda: “Japan”

    Issei Suda (須田 一政, Suda Issei) is a Japanese photographer. Born in Tokyo in 1940, Suda graduated from the Tokyo College of Photography in 1962. ASX CHANNEL: ISSEI SUDA (All rights reserved. Images @ Issei Suda)

Keizo Kitajima: “Photo Express: Tokyo” (2012)

  By Paul Loomis, for ASX, August 2012 The photographs in “Photo Express: Tokyo” (Steidl, 2012) were taken in Tokyo within a single year by Keizo Kitajima, and looking at them is like leafing through his intricate memories. They are complex and celebratory, hopeless and certain and full of people with signatures of fate on […]

daido moriyama

Daido Moriyama – “In Pictures” (2012)

Daido Moriyama uses an ordinary compact camera and never stops shooting. He is one of Japan’s most celebrated photographers. In this film, Daido Moriyama “In Pictures”, we are invited into his studio and takes us on a walk around the atmospheric Shinjuku neighbourhood, his home from home in Tokyo.

Daido Moriyama – “An Evening with Daido Moriyama” (2011)

  #21 – Daido Moriyama http://www.japansociety.org/webcast/an-evening-with-daido-moriyama Before his discussion at Japan Society and re-staging of PRINTING SHOW at Aperture Foundation in New York City, we sat down with iconic Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama to talk about his career, interests and future projects.

ASX.TV: Takashi Murakami – “Birth of Superflat” (2011)

Superflat is a postmodern art movement founded by the artist Takashi Murakami, which is influenced by manga and anime. It is also the name of a 2001 art exhibition, curated by Murakami, that toured West Hollywood, Minneapolis and Seattle. In this short piece, Murakami explains about the SUPERFLAT concept and what he means by that. […]

Takahi Homma – Adrift in the City of Superflat (2010)

Adrift in the city of superflat By Marc Feustel, Originally published in FOAM Magazine, brought to ASX by FOAM During the extraordinarily turbulent and dynamic post-war period , Tokyo became a great photographic city: a city with a distinctive, immediately recognizable photographic aesthetic. Just as Paris’s visual identity became intrinsically linked to the humanist photography […]