Metamorphosis of Japan After The War
Join Derek Trillo at The Open Eye Gallery for a study visit to Metamorphosis of Japan After The War.
This exhibition of Japanese photography from the end of the Second World War to the mid-1960s, starts during the era of Japan’s occupation by the Allies (1945-1952). The charting of Japan’s rise from defeat to global power is shown through images of industry and business: Not in ways that merely record historical events, but in terms of documenting the regaining of pride and the forging of a new identity – from Imperial to Modern. Influences from American photography can be seen in the photography of the period, yet little of this influence flowed in the opposite direction: We now look back on Japanese photography from this era as having been overlooked and undervalued. This exhibition shows a broad survey of this emergent identity, one that produced what are now highly celebrated photographers: Domon, Terayama, Ohara, Sugimoto, Moriyama, Araki etc.
There is a review by Sean O’Hagan here
The Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool. 12.00 Saturday 21 of March 2015
To reserve your place please email enquiries@oca.ac.uk
Image Credits: Featured: Shigeichi Nagano’s Completing management training at a stock brokerage firm, Tokyo, 1961. Photograph: Open Eye Gallery
Dancers resting on the rooftop of the SKD theatre. Asakusa, Tokyo, 1949. Photograph: Takeyoshi Tanuma/Open Eye Gallery
An excellent exhibition, covering documentary work like that above, but also featuring some of Hosoe’s excellent images from Barakei and Kamaitachi – I’m there next Wednesday for Marc Feustel’s talk…
A quick shout out for Derek who led a small but select band around this exhibition. If you’re anywhere near Liverpool this is well worth a visit – there aren’t many places left where you can document a cultural change as deep as that which occurred in Japan after the war and this is an excellent and wide ranging sample of Japanese photographers doing just that.