TOWARDS THE CITY
Yutaka Takanashi

Galerie Priska Pasquer is pleased to present an exhibition of the works of Japanese photographer Yutaka Takanashi, whom the gallery represents exclusively since the beginning of 2010.
In the first overseas solo exhibition to be devoted to his works since the mid-1980s, a selection of Takanashi’s works from the period 1963 – 1974 will be featured.

Yutaka Takanashi was one of the co-founders of the legendary ‘Provoke’ group which revolutionised Japanese photography at the end of the 1960s. Other members of this group included Daido Moriyamya – the subject of two past exhibitions by Galerie Priska Pasquer – and Takuma Nakahira.
The works in this exhibition were published by Yutaka Takanashi in 1974 in the two-part volume ‘Toshi-e’ (Towards the City). This elaborate publication marked both the high-water mark and the end of the ‘Provoke’ era.

While the urban images of the city of Tokyo still bear the hallmarks of subjective documentary photography, the landscape shots are wholly in the radical ‘Provoke’ style, characterised in Japan as ‘are, bure, boke’ – rough, blurred and out of focus.

With this rough, fleeting and highly expressive imagery, Takanashi and the other members of the ‘Provoke’ group finally broke with the aesthetic of ‘photography as reportage’ and its underlying notion that photography is capable of creating an authentic image of reality.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Born 1935 in Shirogane-cho, Ushigome-ku (today Shinjuku, Tokyo). Study of photography at Nihon University. First works published in Sankei Camera. Darkroom assistant of the photographer Osamu Yagi. 1959-61 Kuwasa Design School. Professional photographer at Nippon Design Center, various awards for his advertising work. Meanwhile personal, non-commercial projects.
1968 founding of the photo magazine Provoke along with Takuma Nakahira, Takahiko Okada, Koji Taki. 1974 first book Toshi-e (Towards the City) which is regarded as a masterpiece of the Provoke era. Working both in black and white and color, his fascination with the spaces and people in urban environments continues in later books like Machi, Tokyo-jin 1978-1983 or Miyako no Kao. 1980 assistant professor, 1982-2000 professor at Tokyo Zokei University of Art and Design. Recipient of many awards including the Japan Photo Critics Association Award for ‘New Comer’ in 1964, the Grand Prix Youth Biennale in Paris 1967, 1984 and 1993 ‘Award of the Year’ of the Photographic Society of Japan. He lives and works in Tokyo.

His work has been widely exhibited, amongst others in ‘Fifteen Photographers Today’, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo 1971; ‘Neue Fotografie aus Japan’, Kunsthaus Graz, Austria1976; ‘Photokina `78’, Cologne 1978; ‘Tokyo, City Perspective’, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo 1990; ‘Japanese Culture: the Fifty Postwar Years’, Meguro Museum of Art, Tokyo 1996; Retrospective: ‘Yutaka Takanashi: Field Notes of Light’, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo 2009

PUBLICATIONS (SELECTION)
– Toshi-e (Towards the City). Tokyo 1974
– Machi (Town). Tokyo 1977
– Toshi wa Yume Mizu (City doesn’t Dream). Tokyo 1979
– Tokyo-jin 1979-1983 (Tokyoites 1978 – 1983). Tokyo 1983
– Miyako no Kao: Visages of a Metropolis. Tokyo (1989)
– Menmoku Yakujo: Jombutsushashin kurunikuru (Chronicle of Portrait Works), 1964-1989. Tokyo 1990
– Jinzo (Human Images). Tokyo 1979
– Hatsukuni: Pre-Landscape. Tokyo 1993
– Chimeiron: Genius Loci. Tokyo 2000
– Nostalghia. Tokyo 2004
– Kakoi-machi (Fencing City). Tokyo 2007
– Yutaka Takanashi. Field Notes of Light. Tokyo 2009

NEW PUBLICATION

‘Yutaka Takanashi – Photography 1965-1974’
editors.: Roland Angst, Ferdinand Brüggemann, Priska Pasquer
Hardcover, 116 pages, 41 images, Triplex, Ed. 500
text german/english/japanese

Special Edition
with a silver gelatine print from ‘Toshi-e’ (Towards the City, 1974), in slipcase,
ed. 30