In 1974 John Szarkowski (Museum of Modern Art) and Shôji Yamagishi (editor of Camera Mainichi magazine) organized the exhibition “New Japanese Photography” at the Modern—the first major exhibition of contemporary Japanese photography outside of Japan. Among the fifteen photographers exhibited were those who came to be regarded as the grand masters of post-War Japanese photography: Ken Domon, Shomei Tomatsu, Eikoh Hosoe, and Daido Moriyama. Our holdings have been very sparse in this area, although recent purchases of Hosoe’s major works, Killed By Roses (1963), and Ordeal by Roses Reedited (1971), give us a good core to build upon. Japanese photography publications created from the late 1950s through the 1970s mark a highpoint in the history of the photobook.
Domon, Ken, 1909-1990.
Title: Hiroshima / Domon Ken cho.
Imprint: [s.l.] : [s.n.], 1958.
Physical Description: 7, 128 p. : ill. ; 36 cm.
Acquired through the Irene Burnside Sheldon Fund.
Text and photographs by Ken Domon; designed by Shigejiro Sano; dust jacket design by Joan Miro. Illustrated with gravure reproductions of Domon's disturbing photographs of the aftermath of the Hiroshima bomb and the effects of the blast on those who survived. A red glassine sheet is bound in the front of the book, serving as a visual metaphor both for the moment of the bomb’s detonation and for the late 1950s reality that all events were still tinged with memories of the recent war and occupation.
See the Socrates record for this item.
Hosoe, Eikō, 1933-
Title: Kamaitachi : Hosoe Eikō shashinshū / Hosoe Eikō, shashin ; Hijikata Tatsumi, buto ; Takiguchi Shūzō, jobun ; Miyoshi Toyoichirō, shi ; Tanaka Ikkō, zōhon.
Imprint: Tokyo : Gendaishichōsha, 1969.
Physical Description: [5] folded leaves, [34] fold. leaves of plates : chiefly ill. ; 38 cm.
Acquired through the Irene Burnside Sheldon Fund.
Photographs by Eikoh Hosoe; dance by Tatsumi Hijikata; preface by Shuzo Takiguchi; design by Ikko Tanaka. This lavishly produced collaboration between Hosoe and the founder of Butoh dance, Tatsumi Hijikata, was inspired by the Japanese folk legend of the wicked Kamaitachi spirit, with Hijikata playing the role of the Kamaitachi. The book consists of thirty-three richly printed black-and-white gatefold gravures illustrations, the outside of each of which is printed in a bright cerulean blue. The unfolding and folding of the blue gatefolds as one contemplates Hosoe’s and Hijakata’s visualization of the myth creates what Hosoe referred to as a “subjective documentary” that is intensely modern yet steeped in Japanese tradition.