Yurie Nagashima, Kazoku, 1993 In a previous blog post, I wrote about the photographer Yurie Nagashima whose photographs of herself and her family in the nude instigated a dramatic shift in Japanese visual culture. After exhibiting her phenomenally successful Kazoku series in 1993, Nagashima continued to interrogate photographic subjects related to gender, sexuality, representation and…
Yurie Nagashima, from the Kazoku series, 1993 In 1993, at the age of 20, Yurie Nagashima received the Urbanart award hosted by the Parco Gallery in Tokyo for a series of photographs which would define her artistic practice until today. In her series Kazoku, or Family, Nagashima photographed herself along with her parents and brother…
Kayo Ume, untitled from Ume-me, 2006. “Shutter chance”, that is the Japanese expression borrowed from the English language that best describes the photographs of the Japanese street photographer Kayo Ume. Take above photograph as an example. A young couple makes an evening visit to a local chemist. They are dressed casually, knowing that their trip…