TOKYO-E
Yutaka Takanashi
Le Bal, Paris
May 20th – April 21st, 2011
Tokyo-e
Keizo Kitajima / 1975-1990
YUTAKA TAKANASHI / Machi (1975)
Yukichi Watabe / A Criminal Investigation (1958)
In Japanese, Tokyo-e has got both meanings at the same time: «towards Tokyo» and «images of Tokyo.» This coexistence of two conflicting forces, one that strains towards some elusive reality and, one that simultaneously solidifies appearances, poses in an acute and singular way a paradox of Japanese photography.
How can you represent a territory that is intrinsically perceived as flowing? How can you photograph cities, bodies and objects which are, by nature, shifting, fleeting and forever changing?
These three photographers are looking for the uncertain formula of a culturally mixed Japanese identity, under American influence, and drastically altered by modernity’s new forms. In three distinct ways, their photography challenges a Japan that can’t avoid being thrust into the world’s disorder.
YUTAKA TAKANASHI / Machi (1975)
Co-founder, in 1968, of the legendary Provoke magazine, Yutaka Takanashi is a major character in the history of Japanese photography. In his 1974 book Toshi-e (Towards the City), he caught, in quivering flight, a fast-changing Japanese society, marked by the emergence of political and artistic avant-gardes.
Started a year after the publication of Toshi-e, the Machi series radically broke up with the blurred, overexposed, expressionist, black and white style of the Provoke years. Takanashi then focused on one of the most ancient districts of Tokyo, Shitamachi, where little by little the traditional world was being invaded by signs of modernity. His interior and exterior Portraits bear witness to this planned disappearance, in the intense yet faded colours of still lifes.
These Portraits are devoid of any human presence. Sometimes, rarely, there remain traces of life: some garment, a rusty bicycle. A city (Machi), yes, but gutted by who knows what catastrophe. The compositions are extremely rich, frames within the frame, a profusion of details and plays of colours, contradicting this feeling of immobility and silence by confronting it with countless lines of force. Their confrontation yields a strange disquiet: haunted photographs, haunted maybe by the last breath of everlasting Japan. Takanashi returns to Shitamachi in the same way as you pay a visit to your dead.
The series, partly published in Asahi Camera magazine, starting in 1975, became the subject of Machi, a book published in 1977 by The Asahi Shinbun.
Tokyo-e
Keizo Kitajima / 1975-1990
YUTAKA TAKANASHI / Machi (1975)
Yukichi Watabe / A Criminal Investigation (1958)
In Japanese, Tokyo-e has got both meanings at the same time: «towards Tokyo» and «images of Tokyo.» This coexistence of two conflicting forces, one that strains towards some elusive reality and, one that simultaneously solidifies appearances, poses in an acute and singular way a paradox of Japanese photography.
How can you represent a territory that is intrinsically perceived as flowing? How can you photograph cities, bodies and objects which are, by nature, shifting, fleeting and forever changing?
These three photographers are looking for the uncertain formula of a culturally mixed Japanese identity, under American influence, and drastically altered by modernity’s new forms. In three distinct ways, their photography challenges a Japan that can’t avoid being thrust into the world’s disorder.
YUTAKA TAKANASHI / Machi (1975)
Co-founder, in 1968, of the legendary Provoke magazine, Yutaka Takanashi is a major character in the history of Japanese photography. In his 1974 book Toshi-e (Towards the City), he caught, in quivering flight, a fast-changing Japanese society, marked by the emergence of political and artistic avant-gardes.
Started a year after the publication of Toshi-e, the Machi series radically broke up with the blurred, overexposed, expressionist, black and white style of the Provoke years. Takanashi then focused on one of the most ancient districts of Tokyo, Shitamachi, where little by little the traditional world was being invaded by signs of modernity. His interior and exterior Portraits bear witness to this planned disappearance, in the intense yet faded colours of still lifes.
These Portraits are devoid of any human presence. Sometimes, rarely, there remain traces of life: some garment, a rusty bicycle. A city (Machi), yes, but gutted by who knows what catastrophe. The compositions are extremely rich, frames within the frame, a profusion of details and plays of colours, contradicting this feeling of immobility and silence by confronting it with countless lines of force. Their confrontation yields a strange disquiet: haunted photographs, haunted maybe by the last breath of everlasting Japan. Takanashi returns to Shitamachi in the same way as you pay a visit to your dead.
The series, partly published in Asahi Camera magazine, starting in 1975, became the subject of Machi, a book published in 1977 by The Asahi Shinbun.
