Visual Culture Blog

Hisaji Hara, A Study of ‘Therese’, 2009 and Balthus, Therese, 1938

The provocative paintings of the French-Polish artist Balthus are the starting point for Japanese photographer Hisaji Hara’s visually arresting photographs currently on display at the Michael Hoppen Gallery. Like in Balthus’ work, the photographs are deeply voyeuristic, sexually suggestive, and fetishistic. As their titles indicate, the photographs are a study of’ well-known Balthus paintings that Hara generously appropriated from. Here, particularly in the context of Japanese photography, Hara appears to walk on well-trodden territory. In his acclaimed series Self-portrait as Art History, Yasumasa Morimura similarly appropriated iconic images from Western culture in his photographic montages. Rather than trying to match the original image as closely as possible however, Hara used Balthus’ work as a template, or a source, to produce photographs that are visually complex and culturally loaded in their own right.

Yasumasa Morimura, Futago, 1988

The re-occurring motif of the Japanese schoolgirl in Hara’s work is less a reference to Balthus’ preference for young girls in his paintings, but rather, it more likely refers to the fetishistic value ascribed to the schoolgirl (and her uniform) in the context of Japanese culture. While this fetish is historically located in Japan’s troubled transition to a modern nation-state, it is intriguing to note that Hara’s photographs, in spite of being produced within the last two years, purposefully look aged.

Hisaji Hara, A Study of the ‘Portrait of Therese’, 2009 and Margrethe Mather, Florence Deshon with Fan, 1921

The vintage quality of the photograph is achieved in a number of ways. Firstly, the prints are black and white pigment prints which have a brown tinge to them. The location for Hara’s photographs too, a derelict privately run Japanese medical clinic from the 1940s and 1950s, creates the atmosphere of a bygone era. In addition to that, Hara’s portraits are produced with a large format camera, which inevitably has a more narrow depth of field and subjects fall out of focus more easily. The soft focus in Hara’s photographs immediately brings to mind Pictorialism – an aesthetic movement that dominated photography in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Hisaji Hara, A Study of ‘The Salon’, 2009

Apart from creating images that look purposefully aged, the optical devices applied by Hara also contribute to the voyeuristic dimension of his gaze. In A study of ‘The Salon’, Hara appears to change the focus of the camera, comparable to the cinematic technique of split-focussing, by using multiple exposures. Like the masculine gaze naturalized by the cinematic apparatus, Hara’s focus is highly selective, voyeuristic, even intrusive.

Hisaji Hara, A Study of ‘The Room’, 2009

Noritoshi Hirakawa, Angel in El Paso, Texas, undated

The apparent voyeurism is further emphasized by photographing his subjects from low vantage points, from a distance, or through open doors and windows. The door or window frame at the edge of some of Hara’s photograph are poignant references to the framing of the photograph: a process in which visual information is not only included, but also excluded. In other words, the door and window frames function as an allegory for the dialectical relationship between inclusion and exclusion so elemental to the act of photographing. Hara’s photographs are however less about the process of photography than they are about the process of looking. Here, Hara appears to tap into a lineage of photographers such as Kiyoshi Yoshiyuki or, more recently, Noritoshi Hirakawa, whose work deconstructs and problematizes the act of looking itself.

Hisaji Hara, A Study of ‘Because Cathy taught him what she learnt’, 2009

In A Study of ‘Because Cathy taught him what she learnt’, Hara thus sets out a complex scenario in which the apparent voyeuristic nature of the image comes to the fore: though his eyes are hidden by a hat, a young man can be seen looking at a girl kneeling on the floor. His downward gaze is emphasized by his body diagonally leaning forward on a chair. Hara meanwhile, the apparent stage master of this scenario, produces a photograph which is being looked at in context of the gallery. These multiple levels of looking are completed in the realization that the young woman – the clichéd object of the photographer’s gaze – is knowingly looking straight back at us.

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. Other recommendations can be found in our online bookshop.

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.