Japan

Keiichi Tanaami on “Pop Art”

“I have never thought of myself as a pop artist. However, when I was young there was a time when I was influenced by the methodologies and techniques of pop artists, such as Warhol.”

Daisuke Yokota’s “Taratine”: A Lexicon of Milk

Daisuke Yokota’s “Taratine” is a personal journey between the worlds he once knew of his mother to that of his lover.

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 […]

WATANABE KATSUMI: “GANGS OF KABUKICHO”

The subjects in Watanabe’s photographs are the prostitutes, street people, Drag Queens, entertainers and gangsters (Yakuza) that populated Kabukicho at night.

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 […]

William Klein’s Tokyo Pop

William Klein was invited to Tokyo in 1961, where he shot for three months and made more than 1,000 pictures.

Small Things in Silence, Bound in Blue: Yamamoto Masao

Yamamoto Masao had not only treated these prints with a range of teas, and chemicals—this I already knew—but also with tears from his own eyes.

Keizo Kitajima’s Street Portraits of 1980’s NYC

Three New Titles by Daido Moriyama in ‘Mirage’, ‘White and Vinegar’ and ‘Dazai’

Mirage swings between the dynamic of a lover’s intimate photographs and those of a lonely stalker. By Owen Campbell, ASX, March 2015 The standard, reflexive way of referring to Mirage (2013), White and Vinegar (2012), and Dazai (2014) would be “three books by the photographer Daido Moriyama, as well as a story by Osamu […]

Feeling of Spring Unworthy of Compassion in Araki’s ‘Marvelous Tales of Black Ink’

@ Nobuyoshi Araki Feeling of Spring Unworthy of Compassion. By Alex Bocchetto, ASX, March 2015 As soon as I open I open Marvelous Tales of Black Ink I’m welcomed by a woman with mysterious eyes, her tits squeezed by hemp rope, She’s looking in the camera with a vague hint of ennui like she’s out […]