New Japanese Photography

by John Szarkowski (Editor), Shoji Yamagishi (Editor)

This book surveys the major innovative figures in recent Japanese photography and reports on the most significant work being done by younger photographers in Japan today. Within the past twenty-five years the character of Japanese photography has changed radically, and its former dependence on the patterns and attitudes of the traditional Japanese media has been replaced by a sometimes harshly realistic objectivity. At the root of this change was a desire to find ways in which photography could deal directly with contemporary experience, rather than with the basically formalistic issues of picture structure. The work produced under this impetus has influenced photographic thinking throughout the world. The volume presents the distinctive work of fifteen photographers.

Genres: Photography

110 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

John Szarkowski was an American photographer and curator best known for his role as the director of the Museum of Modern Art’s Photography Department from 1962 through 1991. “Photography is the easiest thing in the world if one is willing to accept pictures that are flaccid, limp, bland, banal, indiscriminately informative, and pointless,” he once explained. “But if one insists in a photograph that is both complex and vigorous it is almost impossible.”

Born Thaddeus John Szarkowski on December 18, 1925 in Ashland, WI, he went on receive a degree in art history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1948. After working as a museum photographer at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, he moved to Buffalo to teach photography. The artist then relocated to Chicago, where he worked on his photobook The Idea of Louis Sullivan (1956). After his appointment at MoMA in 1962, Szkarowski would help launch the careers of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and William Eggleston, among several others during his tenure. He also published acclaimed books on the history of photography, including The Photographer’s Eye (1966) and Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art (1973).

After retiring from the museum in 1991, Szarkowski resumed his own career in photography. He died on July 7, 2007 in Pittsfield, MA. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others.

Reviews

[Derek]

post-war japan and its rapid westernization that followed is something that is very interesting to me. there is a lot of incredible art that was produced in that era that deals with the loss of tradition and the adaptation of modernity, because that is just what was happening there at an arguably unchallenged rate.

this book and its collection of photographs are a fascinating account of that, and naturally everyone will read it differently, but i think the editors clearly had those themes in mind while arranging.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good collection from several different artists. Some appeal to me, some don't, but that's natural. Photographers I liked from this collection: Bishin Jumonji, Ryoji Akiyama, Ikko, Masatoshi Naitoh, Shomei Tomatsu,