Camera Austria International

84 | 2003

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TOSHIHARU ITO
The Topology, The Edges and the Islands of Contemporary Japanese Photography
KAZUE KOBATA
Solidarity and Solitude
MICHIKO KASAHARA
The Changed Conditions of Photography
MASAFUMI FUKAGAWA
From Fujisan to Fujiyama
MINORU SHIMIZU
The Whence and the Wither of Colour Photography. Eggleston, Meyerowitz and the New Generation
SHINO KURAISHI
Unknown Rules – Notes on Takuma Nakahira's Experiments in the early Seventies
TOSHIYA UENO
Rethinking the Cultural and Spatial Turn in Japanese Photography: A Psycho-Photo-Geography of Japan
MAO ISHIKAWA
My Pride as an Okinawan

KYOICHI TSUZUKI
Universe for Rent
KEIZO KITAJIMA
KISEI KOBAYASHI
MIKA NINAGAWA
SAKIKO NOMURA
MASAFUMI SANAI
TOMOKO SAWADA
RISAKU SUZUKI

Preface

In Camera Austria 1/1980, Tsuno Enari published a series on New York families; as early as 1980 the Forum Stadtpark photo gallery, headed by Manfred Willmann, presented, not least through the agency of Seiichi Furuya, an exhibition of Daido Moriyama (cf. Camera Austria 2/1980); in 1978 and 1984 of Shomei Tomatsu and in 1993 of Miyako Ishiuchi; in 1992, finally, the first individual exhibition of Nobuyoshi Araki outside Japan that was later presented all over Europe; in 1994 the group exhibition of European photographers “Another Continent” was on show at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography the exchange between Camera Austria and Japanese institutions and artists has a long tradition. “Keep in Touch. The Social Use of Images”, a project made possible thanks to our co-operation with Graz 2003 – Cultural Capital of Europe and the support of EU Japan Fest, is a reason for us to rekindle this exchange in view of current events.

Entries

TOSHIHARU ITO

The Topology, The Edges and the Islands of Contemporary Japanese Photography

A society is like a living fabric. On the underside of this fabric – imperceptible from the outside – there is a mesh of distinct threads that only becomes visible at the outmost edges of the fabric. If we examine these edges more closely we come to see what elements make up the fabric. Just as we can recognise the interweave of warp and woof by the hem, so too can we discern the forces that go to make up a society by looking at its periphery. So where would this put the periphery of modern Japanese society? And what indication could we find at the edges of the conflicting forces? Discovering these edges is perhaps the most important task to be fulfilled by contemporary photography. Yet these edges do not manifest themselves in the form of a contrast between the centre and the periphery or border area. Potentially, these edges exist everywhere, and very specific actions are required to bring them to the surface. An action creates an edge in a particular place, and the next action at this edge creates another edge.

Text feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, pp. 9–12.
KAZUE KOBATA

Solidarity and Solitude

I want to look at Japanese contemporary photography in its global political, social and historical contexts, specifically the period between 1945 and 1980; let me call this then an archaeological excavation of what lies behind today’s Japanese society and psyche.
If I may begin with a personal reference: I was born on July 26, 1946, precisely one day after the Potsdam Declaration was announced by Britain, the USA and China, demanding Japan’s unconditional surrender. This makes me one of the earliest post-war Japanese persons, for I was conceived, thanks to my lusty parents, just after Japan put an end to its expansionist and ultra-nationalistic enterprise on August 15, 1945, when the theretoforedivine Emperor declared himself to be human, and the immediate post-war political, social and economic rehabilitation of the country, under the control of the US occupation forces, commenced. This so-called democratic reconstruction process continued through the 1960s with the signing of US-Japan Security Treaty signed in 1960, or even till 1972, when Sino-Japanese relations were normalized, thus putting behind Japan’s brutal and racist aggression towards the Chinese people both before and during the war.
Already during my childhood in the 1950s, however, it was Americanization and not genuine self-rectification and democratization that Japan was undergoing. Americanization meant that the negative aspects of America were also being imposed upon Japan. Still now, I vividly remember an incident that made and thenceforth kept me skeptical of what the adults around me used to say about the occupying forces. I was five or six years old, a kindergarten pupil living in a community in Tokyo where it was not unusual to see US soldiers because there was a prison nearby where members of the military who had been found guilty of committing crimes were confined. One day I was walking alone after school, face down, playing a private game regarding how to move among the grid of paving stones. “Two to the right, three to the left, one forward, two back,” and so on. I was lost in it when suddenly I bumped headlong into something large and powerful, and then I saw matchsticks scattered all over the ground. I then looked up, and was terrified to see a gigantic, black GI, in uniform, towering over me. I was afraid that he might be angry and begin to bully me, so I immediately got on the ground and began to gather up the matchsticks. But the GI was calm and friendly, and helped me collect the sticks. Then he patted me on the head, and gave me a pack of colorful jelly beans – a precious and unexpected gift as these were only available at the American PX. And then he walked away. In conscious retrospect now, I can say that this was the first time in my life that I was trapped in servility and self-humiliation.

Text feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, pp. 13–16.
- MICHIKO KASAHARA
  
  The Changed Conditions of Photography
  
  What the artists express in a very subtle, barely perceptible way certainly comprises ananticipation of the future, even if this aspect is easily overlooked. By anticipation of the future I mean the intention to record the present with views, to criticise and at least slightly change it. Hence, to those who do not want this change to happen, their works are poison.
  In order to capture the increasingly complex world, in order to make the voice of others heard, they begin by straightening out the things in everyday life that surrounds them. They challenge the viewpoint from which their environment, the society in which they live, the history that has shaped them, the world from which they live, as something to be taken for granted, and begin to reassemble them piece by piece. They attempt to make out the world by touching the things that surround them in everyday life.
  This work leads to a reshaping of the mesh of relations between them and the various things. How should they position themselves in the world? In the relationship to themselves, in the relationship to the place in which they live, in the relationship to the city in which they have daily dealings, in the relationship to their family, in the relationship to the individual and social memory that shapes their self, in the relationship to their own and to collective history that they cannot escape. This is no easy task. Rather it is a tremendous task to which there is no singular solution. Only by incessantly asking questions is it possible to break down, rebuild and change. The resultant works uncover and visualise the problems. And new works arise from this. In this unending process there evolves a mesh of relationships that produces these works.
  The current system is, in a way, in a fix, dark clouds are brewing over Japanese society, and precisely this gives rise to artistic expression and the growing importance of this expression. But of course, it is not easy to carry on constantly producing works that contain the above-mentioned poison in a Japan that is currently filled with a sense of standstill. How can art be upheld without giving up, faced with a counterthrust that grows ever stronger? This is not only a question that concerns artists but all of us living in this present-day world. It is not artists alone who uphold the demand for unusual works created in ordinary, everyday life, but rather us. I believe that this is one of the most important tasks we have to fulfil.
  
  Text feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, pp. 17–23.
- The Changed Conditions of Photography
  
  Miyako Ishiuchi, aus der Serie / from the series: Mother's # 39, 2002. C-print.
- MASAFUMI FUKAGAWA
  
  From Fujisan to Fujiyama
  
  A special activity has been evolving in modern Japanese photography since the nineteen-eighties in the field of landscape representation. In the first half of the nineteen-nineties, the eyes of Europe were also on modern Japanese landscape photographers such as Toshio Shibata or Norio Kobayashi, who were presented at numerous photography festivals and exhibitions. Although it seemed as though this movement had passed its peak in the mid-nineties, it began to exhibit new and notable aspects at the onset of the 21st century. In my feature, I would like to present the development of Japanese landscape photography from recent years to the present, reflecting on its importance.
  
  Text feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, pp. 24–30.
- From Fujisan to Fujiyama
  
  Rika Noguchi, Fujiyama (A Prime) # 12, 1997 – 99. C-print, 94,5 cm × 66 cm.
- MINORU SHIMIZU
  
  The Whence and the Wither of Colour Photography. Eggleston, Meyerowitz and the New Generation
  
  Colour has been a key attribute of photographic expression since around 1990. It is found not in the style of abstract colour compositions but in the snapshot style, as it is known. In colourful spectra, such colour photos feature around the globe in exhibitions and books of photography, but equally so in fashion magazines and advertising. Japan is no exception: for many artists, colour is an essential constitutive element of their work. The tonality and quality of colour are more important than the subject of the picture. What function does colour fulfil in their photography? In itself, the term »Japanese colour photography« sounds vague and abstract. The useful, if in fact meaningless word snapshot has also often been rejected (e. g. by William Eggleston). On the other hand, it is difficult to find a suitable alternative. Let us take snapshots, then, to mean such photos taken in unremarkable everyday situations that, at first glance, do not display any artificial, artistic character, but rather depict the natural, uncontrived fragmentarity of life. By “Japanese colour photography” I mean a certain style or certain trend in Japanese photography that might be described with such keywords as intimacy, pastel hue, everyday object in atmospheric colour, etc. An opening sequence of the Japanese TV-serial “Kokoro” (heart) demonstrates the diffusion and popularity of this style.
  
  Text feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, pp. 31–35.
- The Whence and the Wither of Colour Photography. Eggleston, Meyerowitz and the New Generation
  
  Still aus / from: Kokoro (japanische Fernsehserie / japanese TV series).
- SHINO KURAISHI
  
  Unknown Rules – Notes on Takuma Nakahira's Experiments in the early Seventies
  
  In what way has the transition from modernism to post-modernism taken place in Japanese culture? Modernism in Japan is not only characterised by the fact that it has preserved many traditional elements, starting with the Tenno system, the transition to post-modernism is of an equally peculiar nature. However, the criticism of modernism that has developed in the course of radicalisation since the early nineteen-seventies may encourage us to oppose the widespread conservatism found today in politics and culture. On the occasion of the current solo exhibition of the uncompromising photographer Takuma Nakahira at Yokohama Museum of Art (“Takuma Nakahira: Degree Zero-Yokohama”, 4.10 – 7.12.2003), I looked into a question that people have been asking unremittingly since the advent of modernism – how the photographic subject should be.
  
  Text feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, pp. 36–40.
- Unknown Rules – Notes on Takuma Nakahira's Experiments in the early Seventies
  
  Takuma Nakahira, aus der Serie / from the series: Circulation: Date, Place, Events, 1971. Gelatin Silver Print, 32,5 cm × 46 cm.
- TOSHIYA UENO
  
  Rethinking the Cultural and Spatial Turn in Japanese Photography: A Psycho-Photo-Geography of Japan
  
  Since 1968, the various types of cultural expression including photography have inspired the cultural politics or social activities all over the world. This is true too for Japan. Photographic imagination and practice were one of the instances in the cultural politics and theory following the situation and its generation of 1968, especially in the fields of urbanism, urban theory, cultural geography and architecture. It is worth tracing back this process by focusing on some particular magazines and photographic works. Certainly this can provide with some comparative conceptual conjunction between Europe and Japan.
  I would first like to examine the case of the influential photography magazine, Provoke, which was edited and organized by several important photographers and as well as one cultural critic, including Kouji Taki, Takuma Nakahira, Daido Moriyama and others. It is possible to compare the conceptual and strategic attempts raised by Provoke with the legendary activities of the Situationist movement in late 1960s in Paris. This does not necessarily imply that Provoke was a mere Japanese counterpart of Situationism. However, the methodological similiarities implied in Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle(1967) is significant. It would be worthwhile translating the entire Provoke manifesto despite its length.
  
  Text feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, pp. 41–44.
- Rethinking the Cultural and Spatial Turn in Japanese Photography: A Psycho-Photo-Geography of Japan
  
  Hotaka-sai (Hotaka-festival), Hotaka-mountain in Gifu prefecture in Japan, August 2002. Photo: Kotaro.
- MAO ISHIKAWA
  
  My Pride as an Okinawan
  
  Okinawa, the group of islands I was born on, is located near Taiwan, in the southernmost part of Japan. It consists of 64 islands, some big, some small, with about 1.2 million people living on them. They are tropical islands, made of coral reef, known for their “blue ocean and blue sky” and thousands of tourists visit the islands throughout the year.
  That’s the land where I was born 50 years ago. In 1945, when World War II ended, the US military robbed the Okinawan people of their land by burning their houses and then building huge US military bases. Moreover, the defeat of the war resulted in separating Okinawa from the mainland of Japan and putting it under US control for 27 years until May 15, 1972. The Japanese government abandoned Okinawa stating to America, “You can do whatever you want with Okinawa, but please do not attack us in the mainland.”
  
  Text feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, pp. 45–52.
- My Pride as an Okinawan
  
  Mao Ishikawa, aus der Serie / from the series: Okinawa Soul, 1985 – 2003. SW-Fotografie / b/w photograph, ca. 35 cm × 43 cm.
- KYOICHI TSUZUKI
  
  Universe for Rent
  
  Hanging on in a quiet residential area is this one lone dilapidated woodframe tenant house, where atop the creaky stairs, at the far end of a narrow hallway is her room. “Please ring up before coming,” she told me, but after several calls from right outside there’s still no sign of her. Did I get the appointed time wrong? I try knocking on the door, and there comes a cheerful “Ye-es!” from inside. So she was in after all. When I tell I tried calling, she shrugs, “Sorry. My mobile phone got buried under all the garbage and I couldn’t tell where it was.” She’s an artist, you see, totally unfazed by the sheer amount of stuff filling her six-tatami-mat plus kitchenette. She scrapes pastered wads of chewing gum off train station platforms, seals them in plastic sheets, and hangs them from the ceiling for her slightly offbeat “artworks”. Not long before that, she went around collecting rubbish bags (contents and all, naturally), piled them all up in a room where you couldn’t see the floor, then lived there for months on end as a “performance”. It smelled so bad she had to wear a heavy duty gas mask at all times while watching “bugs I never knew existed” crawling the walls and ceiling. “Compared to that, this is neat and tidy,” she says convincingly. Incidentally, the aluminum foil covering the ceiling isn?t to reflect sunlight into the room; it’s a wind chime of sorts – when the wind blows, the foil rustles in the most pleasing way apparently.
  
  Text feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, pp. 53–57.
- Universe for Rent
  
  Kyoichi Tsuzuki, Müll-Refugium, aus / from: Universe for Rent, 1993 – 2001. Digital print, 124 × 100 cm.
- KEIZO KITAJIMA
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 58–63.
  
  Keizo Kitajima, aus / from: Portraits + Places, 1985 – 2003. DVD-Projection, 2003.
- KEIZO KITAJIMA
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 58–63.
  
  Keizo Kitajima, aus / from: Portraits + Places, 1985 – 2003. DVD-Projection, 2003.
- KEIZO KITAJIMA
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 58–63.
  
  Doppelseite / spread: Keizo Kitajima, S. / pp. 62–63.
- KISEI KOBAYASHI
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 64 –69.
  
  Kisei Kobayashi, aus / from: Asian Japanese, 1991 – 2002. C-prints, SW-Fotografie / b/w photograph, je / each 28 cm × 20 cm.
- KISEI KOBAYASHI
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 64 –69.
  
  Kisei Kobayashi, aus / from: Asian Japanese, 1991 – 2002. C-prints, SW-Fotografie / b/w photograph, je / each 28 cm × 20 cm.
- MIKA NINAGAWA
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 70–75.
  
  Mika Ninagawa, A Piece of Rainbow, 2001 – 2003.
- MIKA NINAGAWA
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 70–75.
  
  Mika Ninagawa, A Piece of Rainbow, 2001 – 2003.
- MIKA NINAGAWA
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 70–75.
  
  Doppelseite / spread: Mika Ninagawa, S. / pp. 74–75.
- SAKIKO NOMURA
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 76–81.
  
  Sakiko Nomura, aus / from: Kuroneko, 2002. SW-Fotografie / b/w photograph, 18 cm × 12 cm.
- SAKIKO NOMURA
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 76–81.
  
  Sakiko Nomura, aus / from: Kuroneko, 2002. SW-Fotografie / b/w photograph, 18 cm × 12 cm.
- MASAFUMI SANAI
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 82–87.
  
  Masafumi Sanai, aus / from: Hawaiii, 2003. DVD-Projection.
- MASAFUMI SANAI
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 82–87.
  
  Masafumi Sanai, aus / from: Hawaiii, 2003. DVD-Projection.
- TOMOKO SAWADA
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 88–93.
  
  Tomoko Sawada, aus / from: OMIAI, 2001. Farbfotografien / colour photographs in Folder, 30 cm × 25 cm.
- TOMOKO SAWADA
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 88–93.
  
  Tomoko Sawada, aus / from: OMIAI, 2001. Farbfotografien / colour photographs in Folder, 30 cm × 25 cm.
- TOMOKO SAWADA
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 88–93.
  
  Doppelseite / spread: Tomoko Sawada, S. / pp. 90–91.
- RISAKU SUZUKI
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 94–99.
  
  Risaku Suziki, aus / from: Kumano, 1995 – 1998. C-print.
- RISAKU SUZUKI
  
  Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 84/2003, S. / pp. 94–99.
  
  Risaku Suziki, aus / from: Kumano, 1995 – 1998. C-print.

Exhibitions

Some places to which we can come, and for a while “be free to think about what we are going to do.”
Robert Barry: Works 1963 to 1975
Aarauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Kunsthalle Nürnberg
HANS-JÜRGEN HAFNER

Abstraction Now
Künstlerhaus, Wien
MARIE RÖBL

Pawel Althamer & Artur Zmijewski: So genannte Wellen und andere Phänomene des Geistes
Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf
MAGDALENA KRÖNER

Frank Films: Offene Filme
The Film and Video Work of Robert Frank
Diagonale Special “Robert Frank – Retrospektive der Filme und Videos”, Kiz, Graz
BIRGIT FLOS

Valie Export
Centre National de la photographie, Paris, Camden Arts Center, London, Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg
JULIA GARIMORTH

Marcello Brodsky: Buena Memoria
Sprengel Museum, Hannover; Haus der Fotografie, Prag; Photofusion, London
FABIAN STECH

Entgrenzte Repräsentation
Ausstellungsprojekte im steirischen herbst 2003, Graz
ULRICH TRAGATSCHNIG

Tastaturen, Bilder, Körper. Zur Ausstellung “games. Computerspiele von KünstlerInnen”
Ehemaliges Reserveteillager des Phönix-Werkes, Dortmund
REINHARD BRAUN

Eigene Orte / Appropriated Spaces
Kunstverein Wolfsburg
SØNKE GAU

Deleuze und die Künste: Wiederholung und Differenz
Symposium: ZKM-Medientheater, Karlsruhe
GISLIND NABAKOWSKI

Ars Electronica 2003: Code – The Language of our time
Festival für Kunst, Technologie und Gesellschaft, Linz
HERWIG HÖLLER

Ein längster Tag. Die US-amerikanische Fernsehserie «24».
HIAS WRBA

Home and Away.
Strangers. The First ICP Triennal of Photography and Video
International Center of Photography, New York
RACHEL BAUM

8th International Istanbul Biennal: Poetic Justice
When Poetry and Justice are Processed as Subjects of a Set of Experiments.
BASAK SENOVA

The Possible Narratives: Art Practices from Lebanon in search of a Memory
An Essay on the Lebanese Artists at the 14th Int. El. Art Fest.-Videobrasil
ANTONIO GONÇALVES FILHO

Robert Mapplethorpe: Eye to Eye
Selected by Cindy Sherman, Sean Kelly Gallery, New York
CARLO MCCORMICK

Books

Stuart Hall / Mark Sealy: Different
Phaidon, London 2001
ANTONIA CARVER

Rethinking Photography I+II. Narration und neue Reduktion in der Fotografie / Narration and Reduction in Photography
Edition Fotohof, Salzburg / Forum Stadtpark, Graz, 2003
MARINA GRŽINIĆ

404 Object Not Found. Was bleibt von der Medienkunst?
medien_kunst_netz dortmund, Dortmund, 2003
CHRISTIANE FRICKE

Imprint

Publisher: Manfred Willmann. Owner: Verein CAMERA AUSTRIA, Labor für Fotografie und Theorie
All: Sparkassenplatz 2, A-8010 Graz

Editors: Christine Frisinghelli, Maren Lübbke, Reinhard Braun, Manisha Jothady. Trainee: Kanako Nasu
Translations: Wilfried Prantner, Richard Watts, scheid & scheid

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84 | 2003

Preface

Entries

The Topology, The Edges and the Islands of Contemporary Japanese Photography

Solidarity and Solitude

The Changed Conditions of Photography

The Changed Conditions of Photography

From Fujisan to Fujiyama

From Fujisan to Fujiyama

The Whence and the Wither of Colour Photography. Eggleston, Meyerowitz and the New Generation

The Whence and the Wither of Colour Photography. Eggleston, Meyerowitz and the New Generation

Unknown Rules – Notes on Takuma Nakahira's Experiments in the early Seventies

Unknown Rules – Notes on Takuma Nakahira's Experiments in the early Seventies

Rethinking the Cultural and Spatial Turn in Japanese Photography: A Psycho-Photo-Geography of Japan

Rethinking the Cultural and Spatial Turn in Japanese Photography: A Psycho-Photo-Geography of Japan

My Pride as an Okinawan

My Pride as an Okinawan

Universe for Rent

Universe for Rent

KEIZO KITAJIMA

KEIZO KITAJIMA

KEIZO KITAJIMA

KISEI KOBAYASHI

KISEI KOBAYASHI

MIKA NINAGAWA

MIKA NINAGAWA

MIKA NINAGAWA

SAKIKO NOMURA

SAKIKO NOMURA

MASAFUMI SANAI

MASAFUMI SANAI

TOMOKO SAWADA

TOMOKO SAWADA

TOMOKO SAWADA

RISAKU SUZUKI

RISAKU SUZUKI

Exhibitions

Books

Imprint

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