Fotografia Japonska jest blizej znana amatorom tej dziedziny pod postacia aktow Araki Nobuyoshi. Album przedstawia o wiele bogatsze dzieje tego medium w Japoni, poczawszy od fotografii Tomatsu Shomei.
Except for the rare international superstar like Araki Nobuyoshi, known
for his gamy shots of nude young women, Japanese photography is a
closed book to Westerners. Yet it has a distinguished and vital
tradition that has enriched every genre, from portraits to landscapes,
with a unique blend of lyricism and candor. In The History of Japanese Photography,
a wealth of captivating images and essays by seven scholars trace 140
years of stylistic and cultural evolution. In 1857 a local ruler had
his portrait taken with a daguerreotype set brought to Nagasaki by a
foreign ship. Eleven years later, official photographs of the
emperor--never glimpsed in person by his subjects—became widely
available. Photographers were increasingly called upon to document new
Japanese territories, natural disasters, and wars. Visitors hankered
after studio shots of geishas and other exotica. Beginning in the
1890s, upper-class amateur photographers contributed a new emphasis on
aesthetics. In the 1930s exquisite Pictorialist images of natural
beauty gave way to modernist influences from Berlin and Moscow, and
then—in wartime—to a conservative emphasis on traditional rural life.
Individual expression dominated postwar photography, as seen in such
images as Tomatsu Shomei’s haunting "Beer bottle after the atomic bomb
explosion." Recent work reflects the dislocations of urban consumer
society.
