Woman in the Dunes, Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964 Shoji Ueda, untitled, 1950 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…
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…
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…