Archive for the ‘Daido Moriyama’ tag
(Dis)connecting Klein + Moriyama
William Klein, New York, 1954-55
The photographs of William Klein and Daido Moriyama are currently on display at the Tate Modern. It is an enormous exhibition, covering a lot of space in the galleries with several hundred photographs on display. The size of the exhibition is appropriate for two artists who were, and still are, juggernauts of photographic production.
Daido Moriyama, Yokosuka, from “Another Country 18″, 1971
Klein was born in 1928 in New York and spent much of the last 60 years in Paris. Initially practicing as a painter, Klein would start photographing as a way to experiment with optical and visual perception. Moriyama was born ten years later, in 1938 in Osaka, while he turned to photography to deconstruct his perception of the urban landscape. Rather than using photography purely as a method of documentation, Klein and Moriyama used photography as a method of visual interrogation, abstraction and deconstruction. The size and density of the exhibition is an homage to two artists who are intensely dedicated to the medium photography, continuously questioning its properties, and who appear to have so much in common despite their obvious cultural differences.
A huge 1950s style cinema billboard with the artists’ names in punchy red letters hangs above the entrance of the gallery. The association here is clear: ‘Welcome to the Klein + Moriyama show’ – and a show it is indeed. The first seven rooms are dedicated to Klein’s work: gritty black and white photographs, full of energy, skewed angles, high contrast and blurry movement. Klein was renowned for his iconoclastic methodology, making him a celebrity figure in his own right. Vogue magazine, the French film essayist Chris Marker, even Stanley Kubrick: they all admired Klein for his radical approach to image making. Apart from photographs, the exhibition makes a point in showing Klein’s work as a film and printmaker. As a result, the different mediums of cinema, photography, performance and print seemingly blend together in the exhibition space. Part of Klein’s iconoclasticism is that he cannot be pinned down on working in a single artistic medium.
William Klein, Isa Maxwell’s Toy ball, Waldorf Hotel, New York, 1955
Commencing his career as photographer about a decade after Klein, Moriyama’s eclectic body of work is purposefully presented in the second half of the exhibition. Similar to Klein, Moriyama produced rough, blurry and out-of-focus images – a photographic style which would become known as are, bure, boke in his native Japan. Consistently pushing against the boundaries of photography, Moriyama also experimented by scratching or burning his negatives, accidentally incorporating double exposures or simply re-photographing billboards and posters on the streets of Tokyo. As a result of working in this way, Moriyama’s photographs are rich with metaphors and innuendo: burnt negatives a reference to death, the double exposure a reference to the American occupation in Japan and re-photographed commercial posters a critique of capitalism.
Image Courtesy of Piero Cruciatti
As a way of illustrating the relationship between Klein and Moriyama, the centre room of the exhibition is divided by a half-open wall and vitrine display, showing Klein’s and Moriyama’s work separately though still allowing the viewer to look from one side of the exhibition to the other. This apparent relationship is most ‘visible’ with regards to Klein’s classic photobook Tokyo, photographed in 1961 and printed in 1964. In many ways, Klein’s Tokyo would function as a guide book for Japanese photographers active in the mid to late 1960s, including the then aspiring photographer Moriyama. Indeed, Moriyama himself has recognized Klein’s impact on photographic discourse in Japan on numerous occasions.
William Klein, Tokyo, 1961
Moriyama borrowing or referencing mainly American artists is a reoccurring theme throughout the exhibition. Moriyama’s classic photobook Hunter 1972 was produced in response to Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road 1957. The Accidents series, famously serialized in the photo magazine Asahi Camera in 1969, referenced Andy Warhol’s Death and Disaster series from 1963. While Moriyama’s photographs of Campbell soup cans in a supermarket for American soldiers in Tokyo is perhaps the most obvious reference to Warhol. Here, the use of photography also underlines a Warholian embrace of art as a form of endless reproduction.
Daido Moriyama, from the series ‘Accidents’, Tokyo, 1969
Andy Warhol, Detail from Green Disaster, 1963
By representing the works of Klein and Moriyama in this order and format, the exhibition appears to promote the classic paradigm of a Japanese avant-garde apparently borrowing from the epicenters of cultural production, New York and Paris. Intriguingly, while Moriyama is the one referencing or borrowing from others, Klein’s work, on the other hand, is the source of cultural products which extends from fashion to cinema. This way of thinking places a lot of emphasis on individuals either being inspired or inspiring others. What appears to be overlooked by this argument is that both Klein and Moriyama are producing works in a very specific political, social and ideological environment that not only accepted their photographs, but also, that actively promoted them.
Daido Moriyama, Highway, Shizuoka, 1969.
Daido Moriyama, October 21, 1969. (In the newly published edited collection Theorizing Visual Studies, I relate the dynamics of this image to Karl Marx’s famous quote: ‘All that is solid melts into thin air.’)
It is therefore not simply a matter of Moriyama borrowing from Klein (a mantra Moriyama repeats himself). Rather, both Moriyama and Klein incorporated a photographic methodology that was the visual equivalent to student protests, opposition to the Vietnam war and a society critical of the flaws of its own democratic system. In other words, rather than being connected by a conscious awareness of a similar aesthetic, the Japanese avant-garde is connected to its French and American counterparts by the political transformations that dominated this era. Despite the hundreds of photographs on display, many of which were deemed radical at the time they were produced, the exhibition placed far more emphasis on the relationship between two artists rather than how these artists are connected by the politics and ideology of a generation. III Originally published on photomonitor.co.uk
After introducing photography maps of New York, Barcelona, London, Berlin, Tokyo and Paris, I am looking for contributors willing to create and maintain a photography map of a major city in the world. Please get in touch!
Connecting Japanese Cinema and Photography
Woman in the Dunes, Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964
The history of Japanese cinema and photography is, as in most cultural contexts, deeply interconnected and related. In the post-war period a number of important films make direct or indirect reference to photographic movements. For instance, the existential meditation on sand and desire in Hiroshi Teshigahara’s classic Woman in the Dunes (Suna no onna, 1964) is strongly reminiscent of the surrealist photographs taken in the Tottori sand dunes by Shoji Ueda in the 1950s; Woman in the Dunes would be filmed in the Tottori sand dunes, not far from Ueda’s childhood home, as the location was the perfect backdrop for Teshigahara’s study of man’s confrontation with the elements.
Funeral Parade of Roses, Toshio Matsumoto, 1969
Daido Moriyama, from Mayfly, 1972
Similarly, the fast camera movements and improvised cinematography in Toshio Matsumoto’s avant-garde Funeral Parade of Roses (Bara no sôretsu, 1969) appear to be linked to the photographic style ‘are, bure, boke’ (rough, blurry, out-of-focus) that was popular among photographers such as Daido Moriyama in the late 1960s. Moriyama himself worked as a stills photographer on the set for Funeral Parade of Roses and a number of his subsequent photographs reference Matsumoto’s eclectic cinematic style (I have written about this elsewhere). From the many occasions throughout modern Japanese history in which a relationship between cinema and photography can be established, this essay will focus on more recent films which, like Woman in the Dunes and Funeral Parade of Roses before them, make distinct references to photographic trends.
Nobody Knows, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2004
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai, 2004) depicts the lives of four children abandoned by their mother in a Tokyo apartment, with Kore-eda’s employing dreamlike cinematography to underline the highly-subjective experience of childhood trauma. Long segments are shot at close-up range, with a macro lens and wide open aperture, creating a narrow depth of field. The result of this technique is that the camera focuses only on a small part within the frame while the rest falls out of focus. The effect is comparable to the visual experience of focusing on an object closely held in front of the eyes. Similar to the tatami perspective employed by Yasujiro Ozu, Nobody Knows is consistently filmed from a low vantage point mirroring the height of the abandoned child coping with alienation. Kore-eda’s highly subjective cinematography functions as a visual allegory for the plot itself: the world is represented from the perspective of a child focusing on small details which, in sum, creates a rich variety of visual layering and textures throughout the film.
The cinematic technique of tight framing and selective focusing appears to be borrowed from the photographer Rinko Kawauchi, who also worked on the set of Nobody Knows as stills photographer. Born in 1972 and initially operating as a commercial photographer, Kawauchi’s emergence as art photographer began in 2001 when she published, in parallel, three celebrated photography books, Utatane, Hanabi and Hanako . In all these works, Kawauchi employs a highly imaginative viewpoint to scenes of the everyday. Photographing in square format, Kawauchi’s vision turns seemingly insignificant details into visually appealing and abstract observations: a dead wasp lies on a windowsill, a half-eaten watermelon rests on a plate, and a spoonful of salmon roe is photographed from a low vantage point. Part of the attraction of Kawauchi’s work is that she photographs subjects that might otherwise be overlooked.
It is precisely this focus on mostly ignored details that has also been employed in Nobody Knows: the camera focuses in tightly on the children playing on a miniature piano, painting their nails with varnish, or nurturing plants that are growing on the balcony of the apartment. The visual similarities of selective focus and tight framing in Kawauchi’s photography and Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows fulfil the function of fragmenting the environment into neatly divided narratives. In both cases, an emphasis is placed on experiences of the everyday: while Kawauchi focuses on representations of the natural world, Kore-eda focuses on the children growing older in the course of the movie. Photography and film act as technological devices to arrest an unstoppable process dictated by nature. Although it might appear that Kawauchi and Kore-eda work in the tradition of documentary practices, it can be argued that their representations of the everyday are more closely situated within a desire to create visual abstractions of an easily overlooked and subjective experience. The optical characteristics of the camera are consciously utilized to further underline a narrative that thrives on subtleties and quiet observation.
Another photographer whose work greatly impacted cinematic conventions is Mika Ninagawa. Born in 1972, Ninagawa was at the forefront of a new generation of female photographers, which included Yurie Nagashima and Hiromix, emerging in Japan during the 1990s. For their contributions to photographic discourse, Ninagawa, Nagashima and Hiromix received the Kimura Ihee award – Japan’s most prestigious photography award in 2000. To an extent, the combined impact of the so-called ‘girl photographers’ paved the way for female photographers such as Kawauchi herself. After publishing numerous celebrated photography books (the preferred method of photographic dissemination in Japan), Ninagawa directed Sakuran (2007). Based on the manga series by Moyocco Anno, Sakuran tells the story of a young courtesan battling for supremacy in the red light district Yoshiwara. Set in the latter part of the Edo period, Sakuran enters a well established genre of Japanese period dramas and movies concerned with the frivolity and promiscuity of a bygone era. Ninagawa’s take on the Yoshiwara, however, comes with an intriguing even confusing modern twist as historical accuracy is completely sidelined for an eclectic mix of rock music, derogatory language and cultural attributes associated with the Japanese idol system. In other words, Sakuran functions as a pastiche of the Yoshiwara.
Like Ninagawa’s photographs, Sakuran is filmed in rich colours, high contrast, flowery textures and sometimes comical excess. Goldfish are a recurring motif in Sakuran signifying the courtesans’ beauty and colourful appearance while, at the same time, signifying the courtesans’ condition of being trapped in a tightly-controlled environment. Like the goldfish – as Ninagawa explores in her visually rich cinematography – the courtesans are predominantly subjects to be visually consumed. The excessive colour in Sakuran also aids to highlight the flamboyant fashion and character of the main protagonist, Kiyohada. Like Kiyohada’s voice, the colours are ‘loud’. The cinematography thus informs the main plot of the movie based on Kiyohada’s continuous subversity and (sexual) aggression. The high contrast signifies, literally, Kiyohada standing out from everyone else in the Yoshiwara.
Often seen in the context of fashion or celebrity photography, Ninagawa’s photographic work does not initially attract a conceptually dense interpretation: the viewer’s experience appears to be based on looking at a subject deemed beautiful, cute, exotic and colourful. The conceptual void left by a lack of narrative in Ninagawa’s photographs is filled in Sakuran, which, seen alongside her photographs, lifts her body of work as a whole. Rather than giving into the codes of beauty, extreme colour and high contrast become signifiers for the subversion a dominant culture. In that sense, Sakuran is far more a reflection of modern life than it is a representation of the Yoshiwara. In this context, it is important to mention that the main protagonist is played by Anna Tsuchiya, a former model renowned for her controversial behaviour and a so-called hafu – of half- Japanese and half-Caucasian descent. The protagonist’s battle for recognition in Sakuran is thus mirrored in Tsuchiya’s own experience of working as a model/singer/actress endlessly touring various TV shows. Kiyohada’s battle to become a high-class Oiran courtesan is reflected in Tsuchiya’s own experience as idol situated within a patriarchal sign economy. Ninagawa’s exaggerated colours and visually rich cinematography underlines the fact that this sign economy is driven by a curiosity for the young, the exotic, the one that stands out from all the others.
What Nobody Knows and Sakuran have in common is that they employ a very specific visual strategy that supports the narrative of the film. This visual strategy, in both cases, is derived from a strong affinity with the medium of photography. While Nobody Knows openly references Rinko Kawauchi’s photographic methodology of fragmenting the world, Mika Ninagawa uses her own approach of depicting the world in an exaggerated culmination of colour and contrast. The result of this photographic approach is that in both cases the optical characteristics of the camera support the narrative of the film as a whole. The examples also point to the fact that film and photography, as being such related mediums, are best viewed not as distinctly autonomous creative economies but, rather, that they constitute regimes of representation that continuously feed off each other and create new spaces for exploration.
This essay was originally published in Directory of World Cinema: Japan Vol. 2 edited by John Berra. Other recommendations can be found in our online bookshop.
Voyeurism and Appropriation in Kohei Yoshiyuki’s ‘The Park’
Kohei Yoshiyuki, The Park, 1971-1979
In the early 1970′s, while walking with a friend through a park in Tokyo, photographer Kohei Yoshiyuki noticed that young couples used the park as a space for intimate encounters in the belief that they are protected by the darkness of the night. Equipped with a small camera and Kodak’s infrared flashbulb, Yoshiyuki produced a series of photographs that captures the nightly performance in Tokyo’s parks. In this haunting series of photographs produced between 1971 and 1979 and simply called The Park, the couples, both straight and gay, become the unwitting actors in Yoshiyuki’s play. While The Park has attracted much controversy in 1979 when it was first exhibited and published as a book in Tokyo, it was nearly thirty years later, in 2007, that Yoshiyuki’s project received global acclaim resulting in exhibitions throughout the US and Europe.
Photographing the couples kissing, fondling and maybe doing more, Yoshiyuki, as it appears in the photographs, was not alone in observing the nocturnal encounters. So rather than only depicting the couples themselves, Yoshiyuki would literally take a step back and incorporate the bizarre dynamic between voyeurs and the subject of their gaze in his photographs. The voyeuristic act is completed by the viewer of the photograph observing the subject of the photograph. Yoshiyuki thus sets out a complex dynamic of looking and being-looked-at which can be deduced into this formula: a couple kisses in the park, the couple is watched by voyeurs, the photographer photographs the couples being watched by voyeurs, and finally, the viewer looks at a photograph depicting voyeurs looking at a couple kissing in the park. In other words, not only the photographer but also the viewer of the photograph become incidental voyeurs in the act of looking.
There are a number of historical and cultural explanations for Yoshiyuki’s set of photographs. Most images for The Park were taken in Tokyo’s Chuo Koen, or central park, adjacent to the bustling Shinjuku district. Throughout the late 1960s, Shinjuku was both, the hotbed for political activism and the New Left movement, and also, the emerging center for the sexual liberation in Japan. Shinjuku thus became, quite naturally, also a major center for photographers keen to capture the Zeitgeist of their generation. Shōmei Tōmatsu (b. 1930), Daidō Moriyama (b. 1938), even the illustrious Nobuyoshi Araki (b. 1940) all produced photographic work, often with hidden or overt sexual references, in around Shinjuku.
Daidō Moriyama, Zoku Nippon Gekijo Shashincho (Japan, a Photo Theater II), 1977
Apart from any political and ideological affinities Kohei Yoshiyuki (b. 1946) might have had with his contemporaries, there is also a geographical reason why young couples would be inclined to make out in the park and subsequently attract voyeurs and photographers alike. Shinjuku is a major transportation hub with several overland and underground train lines converging at Shinjuku station. For those couples that don’t live together and especially for those who are separated by a long commute, Shinjuku represents a logical common ground in which intimacies might be exchanged. Even today, despite the cultural taboo of kissing openly in public, young couples can be frequently seen making out at Shinjuku station. It is precisely this cultural predicament, that making out in public is frowned upon, combined by the logistics of living in a megapolis in which couples are separated by extreme distances, that brings the lovers to Tokyo’s parks. Yoshiyuki’s photographic also precedes the widespread popularity of the ‘Love Hotels’, or establishments charging for a short ‘stay’, which became increasingly popular in the 1980s seeking to cover an obvious gap in the market.
Shōhei Imamura, The Pornographers, 1966
In addition to the geographical specificities of dense urban living, Yoshiyuki’s The Park also evokes comparisons with cinematic trends in Japan at the time. Released in 1966, Shōhei Imamura’s iconoclastic film The Pornographers similarly deals with voyeurism and sexuality in Japanese culture. As film within a film, The Pornographers also seeks to reveal the very power (and limitations) of the cinematic apparatus itself. Like Yoshiyuki sneaking up to the voyeurs in Tokyo’s central park, Imamura depicts his subjects ostensibly in moments of looking. The central focus on the gaze in The Pornographers results in an extremely experimental and provocative form of visual communication. In one scene, the camera focuses on the main protagonist as he is watching a woman getting changed in her bedroom. In order to emulate the protagonist’s gaze sideways through the gap of a sliding door, the camera too is flipped on its side by 90 degrees. Like in Yoshiyuki’s nocturnal visits to the park, the viewer of the film becomes an unwitting accomplice while looking through the allegorical keyhole of the camera’s lens.
Scene from The Pornographers, 1966
Scenes from The Pornographers, 1966 and The Graduate, 1967
Because of its inventive camera techniques and angles, Shōhei Imamura’s The Pornographers would arguably also have an impact on American cinema. The classic scene in The Graduate (1967) in which Dustin Hoffman is depicted looking at Mrs. Robinson’s legs appears to be a close approximation of a similar scene in The Pornographers (1966). Yoshiyuki’s The Park too had a distinct effect on visual culture: in 2008, just a year after it was ‘re-discovered’, fashion photographer Steven Meisel’s series ‘Dogging’ unapologetically copies from Yoshiyuki’s acclaimed photographs.
Kohei Yoshiyuki The Park, 1971-79 and Steven Meisel Dogging, 2008
The appropriation and re-appropriation of images that deal with the desire of (secretly) looking is perhaps less an indication of the social conditions in which they were produced in than it is an indication for how easily and universally such looking can have sexual connotations. Those who knowingly look at those who are unknowingly being looked at also exert a form of dominance over their subject. In this complex power dynamic, the photograph (or the film) acts as an active conduit which lays bare the deep desires and fears of controlling and being controlled. Located in the middle of Tokyo yet surrounded by nature, photographed in complete darkness yet fully visible, as the voyeurs in Yoshiyuki’s photographs sneak up to, watch, and sometimes even grab towards those couples they are looking at, The Park represents the topographical equivalent of a split personality disorder in which these desires and fears appear to be magnified through the lens of the camera.
Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park is available as book. Other recommendations can be found in our online bookshop.
If you are interested in Japanese photography, please download my essay:
Marco Bohr (2011). ‘Are-Bure-Boke: Distortions in Late 1960s Japanese Cinema and Photography’. Dandelion Journal. Vol. 2, No. 2.
