Photography Collection

Working with a selective focus, Mona Kuhn creates dreamlike images. Oftentimes they are out-of-focus photographs of people, rapt, as if it were a different world from the one we perceive when awake. Pictures of the soul. At the very least, they awaken the desire to be one with oneself and nature. The philosophy of classical antiquity knew only one word for nature and the essence of the human being. Even today we speak of human nature and we long for our true nature. Perhaps this is what drives us all throughout life, makes us change professions and partners until we live according to our true nature. Perhaps this is what fills us with a sense of discomfort about our mechanized western society marked by rationality. This might be what drives people to the beaches of southern France to vacation in the nude. Mona Kuhn has photographed people there and captured their desire to live in unison with their own true nature. So far she has taken black and white as well as color pictures of more than 50 people in France.

Although a number of them do not want to have their pictures displayed in an exhibit or published in a book. „They are very shy,” Mona Kuhn explains. However, that might change. „After a few years they give consent to the publication.” The work is a continuous process. She says that in France, friends whose pictures she has already taken will recommend her to their friends and cousins. And in this way she creates again and again new studies of the shapes of human bodies in black and white or the dream-like images in color. The first kiss of a couple for instance, getting back together after a crisis. One can see only their silhouette, seated on the sofa in a vacation home, flowers on a table nearby. Relief spreads internally, salvation. As if at the moment of waking up, with the images of the night, the last dream, taking shape in one’s imagination and the thought: Oh my goodness, fortunately it was only a dream. A dream that only arises in the eye of the beholder fading away from the couple out of focus. It's this distance to the soul of the people photographed that makes the difference between the images of Mona Kuhn and Jock Sturges who likes to portrait nudists at the beach of Montalivet as well. Sturges photographs are somehow dealing with the same subjects as Mona Kuhns and they inspired here. But Jock Sturges is interested in revealing something from the inside of his models and himself, in revealing the relationship between the photographer and the boys and girls, the men and women photographed in a nature surrounding. In the images of the californian artist nature is a very present symbol as Kuhns art is about cultural questions.

Mona Kuhn was born in 1969 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the daughter of German parents. She studied at Ohio State University in the United States. In 2004 she published her book of photographs “Photographs” followed by “Evidence” in 2007. In fall of 2009, Steidl will publish the book "Native“with pictures from Brazil. Monika Kuhn is represented by six galleries in the United States and in Europe.

Oh my goodness, please don't look at this photograph! Rather fear gods revenge for a scandal like this at the end of times! Miley Cyrus is just 15 and this is really a scandal for religious fundamentalists in the US as well as for Disney Channel. This photo doesn't fit the economic good-girl-image of Miley Cyrus and it should fit religiousness and prudery that predominates the public debate in the land of freedom. Taking a photo of a 15 year old actor with the consent of her parents is immediately sexually connotated with pedohilia in this debate. For people in western european countries it's simply weird because a part of the society in the US is very tolerant concerning violence in media but absolutely intolerant concerning an artwork of Annie Leibovitz that expresses just the innocence and beauty of a teenager and nothing more. People in the US will discuss this subject again and again regardless of the photographer. Jock Sturges has provoked such a debate years ago and we need to ask why are people after the era of enlightenment still so afraid of the naked body? Oh, we don't need to talk about enlightenment, we can just talk about the bible. Didn't Adam and Eve were naked in paradise? O.K. the history of sin started when they got aware of that but didn't Jesus came to free people from this captivity? Seemingly not. Religious fundamentalism is closely connotated with an image of god who likes to punish people for their sins and who likes fearful human beings but this has nothing to do with a mature image of god who came to free people and who not only created the souls of men and women but also their body, their beauty, sexuality and passion.
And what about the freedom of art? What about the freedom of parents and a daughter who first agreed with the photo. Miley could not react elsewise afterwards, she was under a huge pressure because of the public furor. And the public furor is just ridiculous and neurotic. There should rather be another furor about the victims of religious addiction and abuse in fundamentalist communities and about the fear of being perhaps sinful. This has nothing to do with freedom this is just the absence of self esteem in the education of millions of people. There should rather be another furor: God wants men to be free, walk on the earth with his head up and break the chains of suppression in society!

Bassenge Photography Auctions is holding two sales on Dec. 3 2008 in Berlin offering over 500 photographs and circa 140 photography book lots. The first sale consists of a private collection of Soviet War Photography 1941-1945 and includes rare vintage, often signed and annotated images as well as prints made in the 1960s by Dimitri Baltermants, Jewgeni Chaldej, Boris Kudojarow, Galina Sanko, Georgi Selma, Ivan Shagin, Victor Tjomin, Michail Trachman and others.There are many large-format prints and many were acquired directly from the photographers.

The regular photography sale offers a wide selection of quality 19th century material. Especially of note is a fine selection of Berlin albumen views from the 1850s by Leopold Ahrendts showing the main sites of 19th century Berlin. Several large-format Alinari Italian views, both albumen and salt prints, from the 1850s are also being offered. Other 19th century items include: selected ethnographic studies of natives of Papua New Guinea by and attributed to Woodbury & Page as well as early images of New Orleans from the 1860s by Theodore Lilienthal (2500 - 1800 Euro) showing steamboats in the port as well as architecture of the city, an early hand-colored salt print by Roger Fenton from 1854 showing participants of the Crimean War (3500 Euro), several albumen prints by William Henry Jackson (each circa 1,000 Euro), several groups of hand-colored Japan albumen prints (between 500 - 2,000 Euro), several very strong salt prints (some lightly albumenized) by James Robertson circa 1854 of mosques and people in Constantinople. Other 19th century photographers include: Joseph Albert, Auguste Belloc, Samuel Bourne, Giacomo Caneva, Maxime Du Camp, Peter Henry Emerson, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Dimitrios Konstantinou, Hermann Krone, Eadweard Muybridge, Carlo Naya, Guglielmo Plüschow, August Sachtler, Anton Schranz, J. Pascal Sebah Giorgio Sommer and Wiele & Klein.

Highlights of the 20th century section are several Ilse Bing prints including:"Champ de Mars, vu de la tour Eiffel" (each 4,000 Euro), several vintage prints by Brassai from the 1930s Secret Paris series (each circa 5,000 - 4,000 Euro), two vintage prints by Peter Hujar: "Joe L.", 1978 (6,000 Euro) and "Paul's Leg", 1979 (9,000 Euro) which is one of the photographer's most iconic images, a 1950s print of Dorothea Lange`s iconic "General Strike" (10,000 Euro) as well as "Homeless Family" (7,000 Euro), a unique gelatin silver print by Dieter Appelt. worked over with ink and paint (4,000 Euro).

Other photographers include: Richard Avedon, Eve Arnold, Wilfried Bauer, Sibylle Bergemann, Bill Brandt, Josef Breitenbach, Elliott Erwitt, Louis Faurer, Andreas Feininger, Franz Fiedler, Larry Fink, Leonard Freed, Horst P. Horst, George Hurrell, Graciela Iturbide, Peter Keetman, André Kertész, Herbert List, George Platt Lynes, Man Ray, Leonard Misonne, Inge Morath, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Leni Riefenstahl, August Sander,Toni Schneiders, Stephen Shore, Louis Stettner, Alex Stöcker, Sasha Stone, Wolf Strache, Antanus Sutkus, Karin Székessy, Herbert Tobias, Bruce Weber and Weegee, Among the contemporary photographers are: Dieter Appelt, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Flor Garduño, Nan Goldin, Candida Höfer, Daniel Kane, Heinrich Riebesehl, Thomas Ruff, Heidi Schneekloth, Wim Wenders and Ulrich Wüst, Harf Zimmermann. A larger collection of photography books is also being offered mostly consisting of grouped lots with various works, among them such famous books as William Eggleston's Guide by John Szarkowski, a signed copy of Larry Clark's "Tulsa" and Franz Roh and Jan Tschichold's Foto auge, oeil et photo photo-eye as well as an attractive group of books on Josef Sudek.

New portraits of Sound of Music star Connie Fisher, BAFTA and Laurence Olivier Award nominated actor Michael Sheen and Today programme presenter John Humphrys will feature in People of Today: Faces of Wales at the National Portrait Gallery, London throughout the month of December. The portrait of Connie Fisher is by Sam Mason, Michael Sheen by Zac Mead and John Humphrys by Dafydd Bland, all winners of the National Photographic Portrait Commission 2008. The annual National Photographic Portrait Commission is a competition to showcase the work of emerging photographers in Wales led by Amgueddfa Cymru- National Museum Wales, in conjunction with the National Portrait Gallery. The commission was created in 2005 to support photographic talent in Wales representing a diverse range of styles and an innovative approach to portraiture. The panel selects sitters with a connection to Wales who have excelled in their particular field. This year's competition was open to those who have graduated from a Welsh college since 2002. Faces of Wales will also include portraits by the winners of the National Photographic Portrait Commission 2007 - First Minister of Wales Rhodri Morgan by Huw Davies, football legend Ryan Giggs by Anastasia Taylor-Lind and weather presenter Sian Lloyd by Amelia Kilvington. The new portraits will also be on display in the National Museum Cardiff from 25 November 2008 and will enter the permanent collections of both museums.

Confronted with the crisis, the results achieved on the sale of the last photographs in the Jammes collection on 15 November at Christie’s were more measured than alarming. Prices on old negatives are proving resilient, with modern and contemporary photography being harder hit. Whatever the period or medium, the photography market enjoyed the strongest growth in the last decade. Between the last speculative bubble in the art market in 1990 and last summer, the photography price index posted an increase of +131%, compared with +55% for sculpture, the second most popular medium over the same period.

At the New York sales dedicated to photography, the most sought-after names suffered the greatest setbacks. More than half the works which had been expected to achieve USD 100,000 remained unsold. At Christie’s, for example, 53% of the negatives being auctioned at Rockfeller Plaza on 14 October remained on their books… (artprice.com)

On Thursday, December 11, Swann Auction Galleries will conduct an auction of Photographic Literature & Photographs containing many rare works, as well as ephemeral items, such as a complete run of the publication Visionaire. Begun in 1991, Visionaire is known for its extravagance. Under designer Stephen Gan’s creative direction, there are themed issues guest edited. The complete run of all 50 issues has a presale estimate of $25,000 to $35,000. Other scarce periodicals include a group of 11 issues of Camera Work, the seminal publication edited by Alfred Stieglitz, Numbers 12-21 and 38, New York, 1905-08 & 1912 ($30,000 to $40,000). Among the books in the sale is a copy of Hans Bellmer’s La Poupée, with 10 silver prints of Bellmer’s images of his beloved doll in various provocative poses, one of 100 copies, Paris, 1936 ($50,000 to $75,000). The book comes from the Library of David Raymond, who built a collection of Surrealist photographs and photobooks.
There is a signed and inscribed first American edition of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s classic work, The Decisive Moment, New York, 1952 ($12,000 to $18,000) from the library of retired dealer and collector Harvey Zucker. Also from Zucker’s collection is a deluxe edition of Lee Friedlander’s The American Monument, one 150 copies issued with a signed photograph, New York, 1976 ($7,000 to $10,000); and William Eggleston’s 2 ¼, from a limited edition of 50 signed and numbered copies issued with a photograph, Santa Fe, 1999 ($6,000 to $9,000). Japanese highlights include Provoke, issues 1, 2 and 3 of the monumental Japanese avant-garde publication with images by Moriyama, Nakahira, Takanashi and others, Tokyo, 1968-69 ($12,000 to $18,000); a set of the Ten Photographers Series with photographs by artists including Fusake, Moriyama, Narahara and others, first editions, Tokyo, 1971-72 ($15,000 to $20,000); and signed first editions of Miyako Ishiuchi’s Apartment, Yokosuka Story, and Suidobashi, Tokyo, 1978, 79 and 81 ($8,000 to $10,000). Other featured books are Moï Ver’s Modernist masterpiece Paris, 80 Photographies de Moï Ver, first edition, one of 100 numbered copies, Paris, 1931 ($14,000 to $18,000); Italia Imperiale, described as the best propaganda photobook from the Fascist era, first edition, Milan, 1937 ($7,000 to $10,000); Man Ray’s Mr. and Mrs. Woodman, with 27 original photographs of male and female mannequins posed in sexual positions, one of 50 copies signed by Man Ray, The Netherlands, 1970 ($14,000 to $18,000); and Paul Graham’s groundbreaking work A-1, The Great North Road, deluxe edition, one of 75 planned copies, signed by Graham and issued with an original Ektacolor print, Bristol, 1983 ($15,000 to $20,000).
Part II of the auction offers a selection of photographs. On of the lots is an archive of more than 20,000 abstract and architectural photographs of the American pastoral landscape. In addition to the pictures by commercial photographer Stanley Costa, mostly from the 1950s-70s, are the negatives, as well as the copyrights to the images (refer to the department for estimate). Among the earliest examples are mammoth albumen prints by William Henry Jackson, including Church of San Miguel, Santa Fe, circa 1883 ($5,000 to $7,500), and sepia-toned silver prints by Edward S. Curtis, including Oasis in the Badlands, 1905 ($4,000 to $6,000). Modernist highlights include André Kertész’s Chez Mondrian, silver print, 1926, printed 1960s ($8,000 to $12,000), and Mondrian’s Glasses and Pipe, Paris, silver print, 1926, printed 1950s-60s ($7,000 to $10,000); Charles Sheeler’s Suspended Power, silver print after his painting, 1939 ($5,000 to $7,500); and Margaret Bourke-White’s Oil Tanks, Standard Oil Co. of Ohio, warm-toned ferrotyped silver print, early 1930s ($5,000 to $7,500). Mid-century works include Nat Fein’s Babe Bows Out, silver print, 1948, printed early 1990s ($6,000 to $9,000); Roy DeCarava’s Graduation, silver print, 1949, printed 1960s-early 1970s ($9,000 to $12,000); a select group of four Minor White silver prints depicting subjects at the California shore, circa 1950 ($9,000 to $12,000); and Cartier-Bresson’s Ile de la Cité, Paris, 1951, printed 1980s ($7,000 to $10,000). Among later works are Eliot Porter’s portfolio The Seasons, with 12 dye-transfer photographs, 1951-61, printed 1963 ($14,000 to $18,000); Ruth Bernhard’s Dark Torso with Hands, silver print, 1971, printed 1970-early 1980s ($5,000 to $7,500); Sandy Skoglund’s Radioactive Cats, dye-transfer print, 1980 ($8,000 to $12,000); and Palma Luis González’s Esperanza, varnished photogravure, 2000 ($5,000 to $6,000).

Some record prices for Important 19th & 20th Century Photographs were achieved at Swann Galleries’ October 21 auction. An album containing 68 original photographs of Brazil, dating from the late 1880s to the early 90s, sold for $48,000*, an auction record for the photographer Marc Ferrez. Achieving record prices were Roman Vishniac’s The Vanished World, portfolio with 12 silver prints, 1936-38, printed 1977, $38,400; Margaret Bourke-White’s DC-4 Flying over New York City, silver print, 1939, printed 2001, $15,600; and Ruth Orkin’s The Cardplayers, from The Family of Man, 1947, printed 1955, $24,000—a record for the suite of six silver prints. Other 19th century highlights included Julia Margaret Cameron’s dreamlike Shepherds Keeping Watch by Night, albumen print, 1865-66, $9,600; a group of 75 rare Japanese landscapes by Felix Beato, albumen prints, circa 1870, $24,000; Timothy O’Sullivan’s Ancient Ruins in the Canyon de Chelle, N.M., on the Wheeler Survey letterpress mount, 1873, $24,000; and Carleton E. Watkins and Isaiah Taber’s Section of the ‘Grizzly Giant,’ 33 feet diameter, Mariposa Grove, California, mammoth albumen print, 1865-81, printed circa 1885, $7,200.
From the early 20th century were Edward S. Curtis’s Chief of the Desert, Navajo, orotone, 1909, $16,800; Edward Weston and Margrethe Mather’s platinum-palladium print of three of the The Marion Morgan Dancers gazing at their reflections in a pond, circa 1921, $43,200; and Tina Modotti’s portrait of Maria Marin de Orozco, platinum print, 1925, $14,000, and a group of 4 photographs from the Tina Modotti portfolio, platinum prints, 1924-1927, printed 1993, $14,400 for the set. The 1930s were represented by documentary images such as Walker Evans’s Coal Stevedore, Havana (Dockworker, Havana), silver print, 1933, printed circa 1970, $14,400, and Sidewalk in Vicksburg, Mississippi, silver print, 1936, printed 1940s-1950s, $18,000; and Dorothea Lange’s Ex-Slave with a Long Memory, Alabama, silver print, 1937, printed 1950s, $19,200; as well as Horst P. Horst’s stylized Mainbocher Corset, Paris, silver print, 1939, printed 1980s, $15,600. Mid-century highlights included several works by Ansel Adams, among them Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada, from Lone Pine, California, silver print, 1944, printed 1978, $31,200, and Sonoma County Hills, silver print, circa 1955, $14,400; as well as Minor White’s Snow on Garage Door, Rochester, New York, silver print, 1960, $14,400, and Jupiter, portfolio with 12 silver prints, 1947-1971, printed 1975, $19,200. Contemporary photographs included Francesca Woodman’s Untitled (skull), silver print, 1977-1978, $14,400; William Eggleston’s Untitled (Confederate flag), dye-transfer print, 1973, printed 1996, $13,200; and Horst’s Round the Clock I, New York, silver print, 1987, printed 1980s, $13,200.

Over 200 works from the Estate of Dan Berley will take center stage at Rago's upcoming auction of 19th and 20th century photographs. Dan Berley was a pioneer collector and a publisher of limited edition photography portfolios. He began collecting in the early 1960s, one of a few individuals who recognized photography as a serious art form at that time. He curated an extensive personal collection of 19th and 20th century photography before his death and co-published fine art photography portfolios with famed dealer Lee Witkin under the imprimatur Witkin-Berley, Ltd. Howard Greenberg was a close friend to Berley and was asked by the family to take charge of his collection after Berley died in January 2006.

The book not only plays a crucial role on the Japanese photography scene, it is an integral part of the art as it is experienced in Japan. Several landmark works stand out as seminal milestones in the history of Japanese photography. These include among others: “Barakei” (Ordeal by Roses) by Eikoh Hosoe, “Oo! Shinjuku” by Tomatsu Shomei and “Shashin Yo Sayonara” (Bye Bye Photography) by Daido Moriyama. Historically Japan has always attached a great deal of importance to publishing, the graphic arts and the image, which played a major role with the country’s long-standing wood-block printing tradition. With a very few specialised galleries or museums in post-war Japan,photographers had only the book as a way of showing their work.This tradition has endured, and to the present day, many photographers favour books rather than exhibitions as the vehicle of choice for their art. In recognition of the importance of the photographic book in Japan, five pavilions have been established at the centre of the fair, in the Central Exhibition space. On exhibit is a selection of the leading publishers of photographic books in Japan who have won acclaim for their creativity and the originality of their production. Japanese publishers in the Central Exhibition space:

Akaaka Art publishing, Tokyo
Featured photographers: Seiji Asada, Seiichi Furuya, Hanayo, Naoki Ishikawa, Miyako Ishiuchi, Miki Jô, Kôichi Kuroda,Taiji Matsue, Maki Miyashita, Hitoshi Nomura,Atsushi Okada,Tomoko Sawada, Rieko Shiga, Seiji Shibuya, Nao Tsuda, Yoshihiko Ueda.
Bookshop M, Tokyo

Featured photographers: Jôji Hashiguchi, Daidô Moriyama, Rika Noguchi, Sakiko Nomura,
Katsumi Omori, Masafumi Sanai.

Little More, Tokyo
Featured photographers: Tamotsu Fuji,Tarô Hirano, Naoki Ishikawa, Naoki Honjô, Rinko Kawauchi, Osamu Kikuchi,Yôichi Nagano, Masataka Nakano, Yoshitomo Nara, Katsumi Omori, Handa Sugano, Jun Sugano Mikiya Takimoto, Masaru Tatsuki, Yoshihiko Ueda, Kayo Ume, Masa Yoshinaga.
Seigensha Art Publishing, Kyoto
Featured photographers: Ryo Owada, Naoya Hakateyama, Eikoh Hosoe,Tomomi Imai, Hideto Kawaguchi,Yasuhide Kuge,Yasumasa Morimura, Nishimure, Hitoshi Ohashi, Kei Ono,Masafumi Sanai, Tomoko Sawada, Shintarô Satô, Naoko Tamura, Kyôichi Tsuzuki, Uchihara,Yoshihiko Ueda, Miwa Yanagi, Kenzo Yokoyama.
Tosei-Sha, Tokyo
Featured photographers: Akimaya, Shinpei Asai, Yoshihi Hagiwara, Kazuo Kitai, Nakazato,
Keiko Nomura, Kôji Onaka,Takeshi Shikama, Issei Suda, Hiromi Tsuchida.

In addition a number of publishers and sellers of rare Western books are present at the fair, complementing this overall picture of the breadth of Japanese publishing. Several rare volumes are on show in the mini-exhibition of Japanese books organised by Harper’s Books (East Hampton). Among the gems are “Ginza Haccho” by Yoshikazu Suzuki in which the streets of Ginza are photographed in horizontal sequences. Published in 1954, the volume is a direct precursor of Ed Rusha’s early 1960s work “Every Building on Sunset Strip.” Another rare item is Kazuo Kitai’s volume “Resistance”, published in 1965. Born in 1944, the artist is not well known in Europe, but this early work anticipates the style and aesthetic developed by the members of “Provoke” in 1968. A specialist in Japanese photographic literature, Tissato Nakahara (Paris), has brought several rare volumes such as Daido Moriyama’s 1982 work “Hiraki To Kage” (Light and Shadow), “Otoko to On’a” (Man and Woman), by Eikoh Hosoe and published in 1961, as well as Tomatsu Shomei’s “11 :02 Nagasaki” from 1966. Toluca (Paris) and La Librairie 213 (Paris) also present a selection of Japanese books while Phaidon (Paris/London) is offering two signed, numbered original prints by Nobuyoshi Araki from its limited editions and the de luxe boxed edition entitled “Araki : Self, Life, Death”, limited to 100. Meanwhile, The Aperture Foundation (New York) is showing recent publications of work by Eikoh Hosoe and Takashi Homma. In addition, Hatje Cantz (Stuttgart) is launching the monograph “Izima Kaoru, Landscapes with Corpses.” This artist’s work can be seen at Paris Photo at Kudlek Van Der Grinten Gallery (Cologne).

By Guillaume Piens, Paris Photo Artistic Director
Having explored the photography scenes of Europe, for the first time Paris Photo is turning to the Far East and has invited Japan to feature as country of honour. Introduced in 1848 during the Edo era, from its earliest days photography played a fundamental role in Japanese culture in which the image was already popular through Ukiyo-e wood block prints. The medium of photography soon became the symbol of the modernisation of Japan and its introduction coincided with Japan’s opening to Western culture during the Meiji era (1868-1912). As the first Asian country to adopt photography, Japan soon developed its own distinctive style by adapting Western technology and its perspectivist imagery to its own insular visual culture: the aesthetic is suggestive rather than descriptive, more emotional than rational and enamoured with shadowplay. The concept of space is asymmetrical and two dimensional, lines are pure and the whole is deeply rooted in an interest in nature. With its long history and unique vision, Japan offers a photography scene of major importance, on par with those of Europe and the United States and is currently commanding increasing interest on the part of historians and the international art market. Indeed, since the 1990s there has been a profusion of exhibitions in the Unites States and Europe featuring the work of post-war artists such as Eikoh Hosoe, Ihei Kimura, Shomei Tomatsu and Shoji Ueda,as well as that of contemporary masters such as Nobuyoshi Araki,Daido Moriyama, Ryuji Miyamoto,Naoya Hatakeyama and Hiroshi Sugimoto. This comes in addition to the recent exhibition entitled “Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan” showing the work of the young generation of the turn of the new century,held at the ICP in New York in May 2008. Several recent publications have also served to enhance the international popularity of the Japanese photography scene, most notably “The History of Japanese Photography” published under the direction of Anne Wilkes Tucker on the occasion of the most important ever exhibition on this subject, held at the Houston Fine Arts Museum in 2003.
Apart from “Japon des Avant-Gardes” held at the Pompidou Centre in 1986 and an exhibition at the Hotel de Sully in 2003 focussing on the period between 1945 and 1970, there have been very few major retrospectives of Japanese photography shown in France. Nevertheless, since the year 2000,there have been quite a number of monographic shows organised by the Fondation Cartier featuring notably Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Rinko Kawauchi. Most recently, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie organised a major exhibition of the work of Shoji Ueda. In Japan itself, it has to be said that the recognition of photography as a major art form came relatively late: the first photography gallery was established in 1978 by Etsuro Ishihara, founder of Zeit-Foto Salon in Tokyo.The Kawasaki Museum, which opened in 1988 near Tokyo was the first institution in Japan to handle photography, before the inauguration in the early 1990s of the Tokyo Metropolitan Photography Museum.

With more that 130 Japanese artists represented by 54 galleries and publishers, Paris Photo 2008 is offering an exceptional overview, unprecedented in Europe, of historical as well as contemporary Japanese photography. Under the direction of photography critic and independent curator Mariko Takeuchi*, this panorama is presented in four sections: In the General Sector some 40 galleries pay tribute mainly to the great classic and contemporary masters. In the Statement section, eight Japanese galleries highlight the creative effervescence of the generation of artists from the turn of the new century, while the the Project Room presents a selection of videos produced by Japanese photographers. The Central Exhibition is devoted to five publishers, emphasizing the central role of the book on the Japanese photography scene. Support for the Central Exhibition and the Statement
was provided By Atom

The General Section
From the Meiji era to the avant-garde ofthe 1930s:
The exploration of the early days of Japanese photography begins at Lumière des Roses gallery
(Montreuil) which is showing rare XIXth Century anonymous portraits. An image of a 1880s princess is testimony to the spectacular development of portrait studios during the Meiji era (1868-1912). The first studios were opened in 1862 by photographers Shimooka Renjo and Ueno Hikoma in Yokohama and Nagasaki respectively. They got off to a slow start as people were initially reluctant to have their photograph taken. But the 1870s saw the blossoming of photographic studios in the main cities, in particular Tokyo and Osaka, as photography gradually became the symbol of the modernisation that was being encouraged by the new Meiji government. Simpler technical processes from the 1890s onwards spread the popularity of photography beyond the limited circle of professionals. A number of specialized publications appeared (the first photography magazine “Datsuei Yawa” was created in 1874), amateur groups flourished, organising meetings and exhibitions and exploring the artistic potential of the new medium. This was the beginning of the pictorialist movements which reached their peak during the Tasho era (1912- 1926). The hand-coloured anonymous images of groups of Geishas from the 1900s shown by Fifty One Photography Fine Art Art (Anvers) are examples of a specifically Japanese practice that is unique in the history of photography. Known as the “Costumes and Customs of Japan” images, these pictures deliberately play on the exotic. They were produced in large quantities for foreign tourists. A number of photographers varied some of the elements within a same image depending on whether they were targeting the local or foreign market. Although they are of limited interest from a cultural point of view, their historical value remains important. The 1923 earthquake in Tokyo was the beginning of a new era and heralded the birth of modern photography in Japan. A new modern city rose out of the ruins prompting photographers to find a “new vision,” one that favoured sharper lines, realism and graphic innovation. An example of this can be seen in the amateur picture of Tokyo’s red light district in 1930 presented by Lumière des Roses Gallery (Montreuil). While the influence of the German avant-garde was palpable in the Tokyo of the 1920s and 1930s, the photographers from the Kansai region who mostly worked in
Osaka began from 1930 onwards to develop new styles that were influenced by European Surrealism and Abstraction. Osaka’s MEM Gallery presents a selection of vintage prints by Osamu Shiihara (1905-1974) who was one of the figureheads of the avant-garde in that city in the 1930s. Trained as a painter, in 1932 he joined the Tampai Club, a hotbed of the avant-garde. As an expression of his poetic imagination, he threw himself into experimental photography, using all kinds of techniques including the photogram, solarisation and a combination of drawing and photography which he called “photo-painting.” With the rapid development of the press and the creation of a large number of photography magazines, the 1930s also saw the beginnings of photo-reportage. One of the legendary figures of Japanese photojournalism is Ihei Kimura (1901-1974), along with Ken Domo and Hiroshi Hamaya. The work of the former is shown by Tokyo’s Zeit-Foto Salon Gallery in a personal exhibition that presents a late and previously unseen series from the 1950s. These snapshots of daily life in the city give rise to a new type of vision, that of the urban dweller as he goes about his business and to the expression of social realism that informed the documentary photography of the 1950s.

The Post-War Period and the 1950s
Defeated in 1945, traumatized by the ravages of war and the nuclear bomb, Japan lay in ruins. Photographic activity picked up again in the early 1950s with particular emphasis on social commentary and the documentary style. Images from that period include those shown by Eric Franck Fine Art (London) of snow-covered landscapes of Northern Japan with the pure and graphic lines of Kiichi Asano (1914-1993). Rat Hole Gallery (Tokyo) shows vintage prints from the “Tsuguru” series by Ichiro Kojima (1924-1964), a poetic yet realistic vision of the rough life of the peasants in the village of Aomori. Also on show are Seiryu Inoue’s (1931-1988) images of Kamagasaki Street, testimony to the social misery prevalent in post-war Japan. An unusual personality, Shoji Ueda (1913-2000) began his series of images taken on the sand dunes of Tottori in 1949, a piece of work he pursued right through into the 1980s in which he pictures his family, his friends and himself against the minimalist backdrop of the sand and the sky. Several vintage prints from the 1950s are on show at Howard Greenberg Gallery (New York) as well as at Caméra Obscura (Paris).

The 1960s: A Turning Point
The early 1960s brought accelerated economic growth and industrialization, and the return of Japan into the community of nations, as symbolized by the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. But there is also the re-negotiation of the Japan-US Security Treaty which provoked violent protests and high emotions among intellectuals and artists. Meanwhile, the development of Japan’s camera-making industry gave rise to a new generation of passionate amateur photographers. Emerging from it are Eikoh Hosoe and Shomei Tomatsu who founded Vivo agency in 1959 with Narahara Ikko and Kawada Kikuji. Active between 1959 and 1961, this photographers’ cooperative defendedsubjective expression and sought to break the shackles of the documentary style. Inspired by Japanese myth and literature, Eikoh Hosoe (b. 1931) worked with author Yukio Mishima on a book in 1961 in which the writer was also his model. A plastic concept of the photograph emerges from these erotic images of the writer who is often photographed naked and surrounded by objects in an exaltation of the beauty of the human body, magnified by the interplay between light and dark. First published in 1963 under the title “Barakei” (“Killed by Roses”) and reprinted in 1971 in a de luxe edition under the English title “Ordeal by Roses” this masterpiece crowns Eikoh Hosoe as one of the great masters of 20th Century Japanese photography. A few rare prints from 1961/62 “Killed by Roses” series can be seen at Howard Greenberg Gallery (New York). Shômei Tômatsu (b. 1930) starts off with reportage on post-war Japan with images of mutilated soldiers, beggars and prostitutes before launching into a more subjective approach epitomised in his landmark volume “11:02 Nagasaki.” Symbolic and fragmented images of objects bear witness to the horror of the atomic explosion, such as a clock showing the exact time of the dropping of the bomb, or a melted-down bottle of beer.The work marks a turning point in the relationship between the Japanese photographers and their approach to their own practice. Priska Pasquer Gallery (Cologne) is showing a number of key works by this leading figure of the post-war years (1950-1970) while Michael Hoppen Gallery(London) brings a selection of 1969 prints, from the period during which he worked with members of “Provoke” - Daido Moriyama, Masahisa Fukase, Nobuyoshi Araki.

The 1970s
The end of the 1960s saw the rise of a young generation of artists bent on creating a new photographic language that rejects objectivity and explores the depths of the human soul.Taboos are shattered and a violent style is imposed that favours “accidental” images that are often blurred and murky. “Provoke,” the mythical publication that came out between 1968 and 1969, embodied the incendiary revolt of the new generation and its reaction against the westernization
of its way of life, and in particular against American influence. The work of some of the leading figures of this generation is on show at Paris Photo, including:
Noyuboshi Araki: The work of this artist (b.1940) is presented simultaneously by Michael Hoppen (London) Hamiltons (London) Rat Hole Gallery (Tokyo) Priska Pasquer (Cologne) and Yoshii Gallery (New York). Alongside the work of Daido Moriyama the latter is showing a unique selection of some of Araki’s early photographs in black and white depicting women in each other’s arms, as well as his latest work in colour. Araki earned immediate fame with his explorations of intimacy, love, sex and death in a society and time when private life and personal emotion were kept hidden and strictly taboo. Since the beginning of his career Araki has produced thousands of images and hundreds of publications using every technique available: transparencies, posters, colour photocopies, polaroids… With this artist, the taking of a photograph is a vital act. His work is a permanent immersion into the depths of our world. Araki opened the way for artists of the new generation such as Mika Ninagawa or Rinko Kawauchi. Daido Moriyama: A former assistant to Eikoh Hosoe, Daido Moriyama (b. 1938) was one of the leading figures in “Provoke.” In Japan he is credited with being the one who took the photographic medium to the paroxysm of its expressive intensity. His highly contrasted images
defy “good technique” with blurs, movement, invasive elements of light or grainy textures. In the 1960s and 70s Moriyama worked on Japan’s urban areas, the theatre of the street and the city’s underbelly (strip clubs, bars for American GIs…) and its marginal inhabitants. Fifty One Photography Fine Art Gallery (Anvers) confronts William Klein’s 1961 “Tokyo” images with those of Moriyama who always recognised the influence of the American master for the immediacy of his work and his use of natural light. Both Rat Hole (Tokyo) and Taka Ishii Tokyo) are presenting vintage prints from this period while Priska Pasquer (Cologne) and Yoshii Gallery (New York) show work from the 1980s and 90s. Exceptionally for Paris Photo, New York’s Yoshii Gallery has brought large format (1m x 1.5m) Moriyama prints that are normally reserved for museum exhibitions and were part of his show at the Fondation Cartier. Fukase Masahisa: Along with Noboyushi Araki, Fukase Masahisa (1934- 1992) was one of the first photographers in Japan to expose his private life. He photographed his wife Yoko for 12 years until the couple divorced in 1976. Fleeing Tokyo at the end of the 1980s, he returned to Hokkaido in northern Japan where he photographed ravens, the symbol of his misfortune and sadness. Fifty One Photography Fine Art (Anvers) and Rat Hole Gallery (Tokyo) bring a selection of prints from this “Karasu” (Raven) series from 1986 in which certain characteristics of “Provoke” are evident: fragmented and sequenced images of the subject, close framing, dilated grain and a tendency towards abstraction and darkness.
Miyako Ishiuchi: Born in 1947 and presented by both Michael Hoppen Gallery (London) and Zeit-Foto Salon (Tokyo), Miyako Ishiuchi is one of very few female artists to have made her mark on the heavily maledominated Japanese photography scene of the 1970s. Her consecration came when she was chosen as the representative of the Japanese pavilion at the 2005 Venice biennale. Starting in 1975 her work explores the passage of time and its effect on human skin as well as clothing (cf. “Dress” from the Hiroshima series of 2007 at Zeit-Photo Salon Gallery) and the façades of buildings. At Paris Photo, Michael Hoppen Gallery (London) reveals a selection of vintage prints from one of her earliest series, “Yokusaka Story,” made in 1977 in her home town which became an American army base. Her grainy black and white images express with deep emotion the ambivalence of her feelings about the town she grew up in and the presence of
American soldiers.
Issei Suda: Presented by Priska Pasquer Gallery (Cologne), Issei Suda (b. in 1940) began his career in 1967 as a photographer for a No theatre troupe whose work sought to express the mysterious side of daily life. Influenced by this experience, in the 1970s Suda began work on his “Fushi Kaden” series: portraits or landscapes in a single 20cm x 20 cm format. In ordinary life, in the costumes and ancestral customs of Japan, the photographer seeks to bring forth the notions of timeless beauty and immutable order. Several galleries are presenting the work of artists who emerged from the contemporary art scene of the 1970s. Keiji Uematsu at Baudoin Lebon Gallery (Paris) Born in Kobe in 1947, this artist works in a variety of media such as sculpture, installation, drawing and photography. From the earliest days of his career Keiji Uematsu focused on the concept of the visible and the invisible as well as the size of space. Renowned today as a sculptor, he produced in the 1970s photographic work in black and white in which he recorded images of his own body during performances that played optical tricks and explored the notion of balance. Kanji Wakae at m Bochum Gallery (Bochum) The gallery is showing early work from the 1970s of this artist (b. 1944) who is associated with the so-called “concrete photography” movement. Resolutely conceptual, the work of Kanji Wakae uses photomontage techniques to question our perception of reality and how we represent it.

The 1980s and 1990s
Now ranking as the world’s second economic power,from the 1980s Japan underwent an unequalled period of prosperity and expansion. Exchanges with the outside world increased and the country experienced unprecedented urban development.There was a radical change in the landscape as entire hills were flattened to provide raw materials for the construction industry in the urban areas. The towns themselves were transformed, growing into mega-cities that annihilated any trace of the past.When the financial bubble burst in the mid-1990s, the boom of the 1980s made way for a deep economic and social crisis. This period of doubt was in many ways symbolized by the 1995 Kobe earthquake and the Aum sect’s Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway.These events revealed deep cracks in the country’s social cohesion and heightened tensions in a society divided between tradition and modernity, collective duty and affirmation of the individual. This period brought the institutionalization of photography, with the establishment of galleries and the opening of the Kawasaki Museum in 1988 and The Tokyo Metropolitan Photography Museum in 1990.Photographers were absorbed into the international contemporary art circuit and established their position as independent artists. Photography was now seen as a major art form. In response to the irreversible environmental mutations unravelling before their very eyes, from the early 1980s onwards,many artists took to photographing both rural and urban landscapes. A new vision of the landscape notably emerged through the work of the following artists:
Hiroshi Sugimoto: Considered one of Japan’s leading contemporary photographers, Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948) works in black and white, creating mat, pure images of and extremely high
plastic quality.The artist works in series, a form of meditation that extends over a period of years. His reputation was earned with several such series, in particular his “Theatres” in which he photographed large screens in old American theatres of the 1920s and 30s, and his “Seascapes,” images of the ocean meeting the sky that were taken in different parts of the world between 1985 and 1988. Each series in its own way explores the theme of the passage of time and captures the essence of the visible in the transitory.This year at Paris Photo, Fifty One Photography Fine Art (Anvers) and Claude Delank (Cologne) are showing prints from the series he produced on buildings that are emblematic of the modern movement in which the blurred quality of the image eliminates the detail to reveal the essence of the architecture.
Ryûji Miyamoto:
Born in 1947, Miyamoto’s passion is for architecture and contemporary ruins. He was first noted for his 1986 “Architectural Apocalypse” series in which he documented the destruction of the pavilions of the Tsukuba universal exhibition. Then came his 1994 “Cardboard Houses” series depicting the survival shelters built by Tokyo’s homeless, and most famously, “Kobe 1995:After the earthquake,” his work on the literal death of a city. At Paris Photo, Taro Nasu Gallery (Tokyo) reveals a series of images he took between 1991 and 2006 of the temples of Cambodia which stand as a meditation on the fragility of civilization. Claudia Delank (Cologne) shows a few works from the Kobe 1995 series.
Toshio Shibata:
Luisotti Gallery (Santa Monica) is showing a number of early black and white works by Toshio Shibata (b. 1949) from the beginning of the 1980s. “53 Stations” is a direct reference to the title of a series of famous woodblock prints by Hiroshige produced in the Edo era and showing the 53 resting places along the road between Kyoto, the imperial capital and Tokyo, the country’s economic and political centre. A century later,Toshio Shibata travelled with his camera along the same historic route now transformed into a modern highway to accommodate the motor car.The
gallery also reveals several silver bromide proofs from a similar piece of work he did along Route 66 in the United Sates. Meanwhile Zeit Foto Salon (Tokyo) brings a few examples of his large colour landscapes from the 1990s. These works, showing the concrete belts surrounding the Japan’s mountains, brought the artist into the limelight.
Naoya Hatakeyama:
Represented by Taka Ishii Gallery (Tokyo), Naoya Hatakemaya (b. 1958) focuses on the fate of nature at the destructive hands of man: the “Lime Hills” series depicts the quarries from which the raw materials for the post-war reconstruction of Japan are extracted.The “Rivers” series looks at the confinement of the country’s rivers into concrete canals while the “Underground” series explores Tokyo’s subterranean tunnels and “Explosions” focuses on detonations in Japan’s mines. Austere and mysterious in their beauty, Hatakemaya’s large colour images stand as a metaphor of the neverending cycle of destruction and construction inflicted upon nature by man.
Taiji Matsue:
Presented by Taro Nasu Gallery (Tokyo),Taiji Matsue (b. 1963) quickly rose to fame in the 1990s for his monochrome mountain-scapes, images of plains or skyscrapers and more recently, his colour aerial views of coastlines (the “JP22 series.”) The illusion of the thirddimension is displaced by his interpretation of space as a flat and asymmetrical surface that brings out the texture of the landscape in sharp, minute detail.
Takashi Homma:
Born in 1962,Takashi Homma who began his career as a magazine photographer in the early 1990s, won early acclaim as an artist with a personal exhibition entitled “Tokyo Suburbia” held at the Winterthur Fotomuseum in 2000. He creates “architectural landscapes” with his colour photographs of the artificial environment of the Tokyo suburbs and the children that inhabit them, capturing the banality of their daily lives and the disenchantment of a Japanese society in the grip of the social and economic crisis of the 1990s. At Paris Photo, Claudia Delank Gallery (Cologne) presents a recent series entitled “Tokyo and my daughter,” in which the artist’s daughter acts as the mediator between the world she sees and the viewer. Alongside photographs of urban and rural landscapes, other artists are presenting works focussing on the question of identity:
Yasumasa Morimura:
Presented by both Juana de Aizpuru (Madrid) and MEM (Osaka) galleries,Yasumasa Morimura (b. 1951) works on the self-portrait, creating scenes inspired by famous paintings by Western artists (the Mona Lisa, La Maja Desnuda…) or posing as iconic Hollywood stars. By cross-dressing in his self-portrait as Marlene Dietrich (1996) shown by MEM gallery, the artist addresses the issue of sexual identity, as well as celebrity culture, but also the complex question of an Asian confronting the standards of beauty as imposed by the West.
Hirô Kikai:
The work of Hiroh Kikai (b. 1945), shown at Paris Photo by Yancey Richardson Gallery is currently the subject of a major re-discovery. His work was recently presented in the context of the May-September 2008 exhibition “Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan,” organised by the ICP in New York. Hiroh Kikai lives and works in the neighbourhood of Asakusa, theepicentre of popular culture in the Japanese capital. Since 1973 he has been taking portraits of passers-by in front of the Senso-ji temple. With minimum means, Hiroh Kikai manages to capture the identity of his subjects and as such, each stands as a commentary on the
human condition. Other aspects of contemporary Japanese photography can also be discovered notably at Hamilton’s Gallery (London) which is showing the sensitive and poetic work of Tomio Seike (b.1943) with a series on Paris from the 1990s, produced specially for Paris Photo. A discreet figure, Tomio Seike revisits 19th Century pictorial techniques and using black and white, approaches with intimacy the street and neglected elements of daily life (a staircase, café table, a glass…) which then stand as poetic, timeless fragments of life untouched by the whirlwind of urban existence. Van Zoetendaal (Amsterdam) and Zeit Foto Salon (Tokyo) galleries are showing the black and white world of Yuki Onodera. Known for her 1994 “Portraits de Fripes”
series Yuki Onodera creates a weightless, floating world. Using technical manipulation such as collage or superimpositions, every image is the result of a gap deliberately inserted into the information circuit. Central to the work of this artist is the issue of perception: she seeks to capture the substance of things in order to access a different level of reality. Resonating with the Japanese theme at Paris Photo, Camera Obscura Gallery has developed a thematic exhibition entitled “East meets West” which explores the exchanges and affinities between Western and Japanese photographers, and brings together the work of photographers from different cultures and generations.
Shoji Ueda and Jacques Henri Lartigue:
Although they never met, both artists had a talent for transforming daily life into a theatre of whim and joie de vivre. “He was my absolute master,” Shoji Ueda once said of Lartigue, “he was curious about everything.” Yasuhiro Ishimito and Lucien Hervé The two artists revolutionized architectural photography and sometimes worked on the same buildings such as Katsura Palace in Tokyo. They both approached urban areas with the same formality (Chicago in the case of Ishimito, Paris in the case of Hervé). The influence of Bauhaus and Mies Van der Rohe’s precept that “less is more” is also visible in their work. Sarah Moon and Masao Yamamoto There is an interesting comparison to be made between the world of Masao Yamamoto (b. 1957) and that of Sarah Moon: there is a similar reference to the concepts of memory,nostalgia and the fragility of the photograph. Both will present a wall of images with Sarah Moon showing a series of small prints from her monograph to be published in October 2008. On opening night, Masao Yamamoto will conduct a live public installation of a number of small prints on the wall of Jackson Fine Art Gallery (Atlanta), as a concrete application of the Japanese concept of “MA” (the space between things, the sense of time, coincidence or changes in situations) which underpins his work.

The Statement - The emerging scene of the 2000s:
The Statement section brings together eight Japanese galleries who have been invited to reveal yet little-known facets of the young emerging scene of the new century. The sheer profusion of current photographic expression in Japan makes it difficult to define a specific trend. Nevertheless, the 17 artists shown in the Statement section do present some similarities: Mainly born in the 1960s and 70s, they belong to a particular generation which is undoubtedly more individualistic and cosmopolitan than those that came before. These artists reached adulthood just when the economic bubble burst and were profoundly affected by the crisis that rocked the foundations of Japanese society at the end of the 1990s. It led them to re-examine their daily lives, revisit traditions and strive to define the soul and identity of Japan in the era of globalisation. The artists shown here also use photography as a medium of artistic expression and experimentation with emphasis on a way of seeing things rather than on the choice of subject. Another notable feature is the strong presence of female artists (50% in the Statement section) among this new generation.
Base Gallery (Tokyo)
Featured artists: Keisuke Shirota (b. 1975), Tsukasa Yokozawa (b.1971) and Mayumi Terada (b. 1958) Keisuke Shirota takes photographs of urban landscapes while moving about either on foot or by car. He then pastes the images onto a canvas and extends them with acrylic paint. The continuity between the photographic and the painted images creates a new sort of ambiguous and contradictory representation: the landscape is stripped of all references and lies somewhere
between the realism of the photograph and the imagination of the painted picture, between the precision ofmemory and alteration of recollection.
Foil Gallery (Tokyo)
Featured artists: Rinko Kawauchi (b. 1972), Syoin Kajii (b. 1976) and Yoichi Nagano (b. 1969) A leading figure of this young generation, Rinko Kawauchi won instant recognition for her three volumes published in 2001: “Utatane,” “Hanabi” and “Hanako.” At Paris Photo she will reveal her new series, “Utatane 2.” This is an intimate narrative in small colour prints that capture ephemeral moments of ordinary life - emotions close to hallucination in the face of the precariousness of existence arising at the sight of a dying insect, the nursing of a newborn or the sacrifice of an animal. Syoin Kajii is both an artist and a Buddhist monk of the Shingon sect. He became known with the publication in 2004 of his book “Nami” (waves). The photographs in this colour series, shown at Paris Photo, are an ode to the spiritual and dynamic properties of water as an element, with its masculine power and feminine generosity.The artist photographs the ocean every day from the island of Sado where he lives. Yoichi Nagano’s series entitled “Sima-Jima” (Islands) with its portraits of island-dwellers are a celebration of the beauty of Japan, its inhabitants and its coastlines, though they are increasingly disfigured by standardized urbanisation.
G/P Gallery (Tokyo)
Featured artists: Masayuki Shioda (b. 1971), Taisuke Koyama (b. 1978), Yumiko Utsu (b. 1978)Hiromiyoshii (Tokyo) Featured Artist: Nao Tsuda (b. 1976) In a solo exhibition, the gallery reveals large format colour works by Nao Tsuda from the series “Kogi,” published in a book in 2007.
Shugo Arts (Tokyo)
Featured Artist:Tomoko Yoneda (b. 1965) The gallery is presenting a solo exhibition of the work
of Tomoko Yoneda with the series she began in 1998 entitled “Between Visible and Invisible:” black and white images taken through the spectacles worn by historic figures of the 20th Century such as Sigmund Freud and the writer Junichiro Tanizaki. According to the artist, this is an attempt to establish a relationship between the visible (the surface of the image itself) and the
invisible (the memory of the historic figures in question and their vision of the world) with the aim of creating a new image that brings the two together.
The Third Gallery Aya (Osaka)
Featured artists: Nobuo Asada (b. 1967), Akiko Ikeda (b.1972), Midori Komatsubara (b. 1965) and Takashi Suzuki Midori Komatsubara draws inspiration from the world of the Manga, the popular teenage comic books, which have grown to become nothing less than a social phenomenon since they first appeared in the 1970s. In his “Sanctuary” series which he started in 2003, the artist’s point of reference are the “Yaoi”- the romantic love stories between boys. She uses digital manipulation to transform the heroes into female figures.The result is a series of androgynous characters (female heads on male bodies) who inhabit a closed fictional world that is free from the oppression of everyday reality but dominated by a sense of confused feelings, the turmoil of desire and erotic fancy. Takashi Suzuki’s focus is on the way we see things rather than the subject itself. In his “Altus” series, he concentrates on the space and intervals between images, provoking debate on the meaning of photography as a reflection of the world as it is seen by the individual. In his series “A Theater Without You - Their Site/ Your Sight,” Akiko Ikeda, a sculptor by training, creates threedimensional photographic installations using images she has cut out of magazines or has taken himself. Nobuo Asada photographs the ocean in the North of Japan from the same location but at different times of the day and in all seasons to capture the ever-changing beauty of nature.
Tomio Koyama Gallery (Tokyo)
Featured artists: Nobuhiro Fukui (b. 1972), Mika Ninagawa (b. 1972), Mamoru Tsukada (b. 1962) Nobuhiro Fukui Fukui photographs the city between midnight and three o’clock in the morning. He uses sophisticated framing to create unsettling urban landscapes in a world of silence, garishly revealing elements that go unseen by day. Mika Ninagawa began her career working in advertising and magazines before turning to photography and more recently cinema. She draws her inspiration from popular culture. Using bright, intense colours she creates a dreamlike world full of floating visions: golden fish in her “Liquid Dreams” series (2003), artificial flowers in “Everlasting Flowers” (2005), or fluorescent animals in “Floating Yesterday” (2004). Mamoru Tsukada began his career by photographing blind people with the intention of showing the hidden meaning of things and making visible what is invisible and all the while leaving the way open to interpretation for the spectator. His 2003 series “Identical Twins”
can be described as “documentary fiction” while his more recent work, “Specter” 2006 and “Cave Painting” (2007) is more abstract.
White Room Gallery (Tokyo)
Featured artists: Gentaro Ishizuka, Naruki Oshima

Emerging Artists featured in the General Section
In addition to those show in the Statement,artists from the emerging Japanese photography scene are also featured by galleries in the General Section of the fair.
Galerie Baudoin Lebon (Paris)
On show is the delicate work of Mineko Orisaku (b. 1960) who revisits the tradition of Ikebana, the floral art in which the harmony of composition is the key. In her photographic approach, Mineko Orisaku carefully places each flower against a neutral background. She enhances the colours in a subtle way, thus lending substance to the image.
Galerie Claudia Delank (Cologne)
The gallery is showing the work of Yuji Ono (b. 1963) with a series of black and white images.The artist photographspaintings by the classical masters of the 16th and 18th Centuries.Over-exposure creates an effect by which the reflective surfaces of the painting catch the light and certain details appear, giving way to mysterious, abstract compositions.
Fifty One Fine Art Photography (Anvers)
The gallery unveils the work of Yuichi Hibi (b. 1963), a film-maker and actor by training. He arrived in New York in 1988 with the vision of the outsider looking in,and photographed the city in a mood akin to “Lost in Translation.” Back in Japan a decade later, he produced a series of atmospheric black and white images of the city at night infused with the solitude of the lone night-time wanderer.
Jackson Fine Art Gallery (Atlanta)
For the first time the gallery is showing the work of Masato Seto (b. 1961) with a number of works from recent series “The Living Room,” “The Picnic” and “The Binran” in which the artist portrays individuals sitting alone in their own familiar environment.
MEM Gallery (Osaka)
Representation of the individual, his or her identity and place in contemporary Japanese society is the common theme running through the work of three young artists on show: Tomoko Sawada (b. 1977) explores the theme of the individual’s relationship to the group,using the self-portrait. She places herself in an endless series of incarnations as a Gothic or Lolita girl (Decoration GothLoli series) or a bride (Omiai), using costume and make-up to create a unique individual for each image. In his series entitled “Our Face Portrait”, Ken Kitano (b. 1968) creates symbolic portraits of Japanese society by juxtaposing and fusing the faces several individuals from the same social group or community into one image. The work of Noriko Yamaguchi (b. 1983) seeks to address the alienation of the individual in a society saturated by information. Inspired by the world of the Manga or Japanese mythology, she transforms herself into imaginary characters such as Keita Girl, Golden Zazame or Princess Ogura. In her “Keita Girl” series, shown this year at Paris Photo, the artist photographs herself dressed in a “cybernetic” jump-suit that is covered
in hundreds of mobile telephone keypads that allow her to communicate with the outside world. For the opening night of Paris Photo, the artist will present an exceptional performance “Keita Girls Marching,” featuring ten dance artists.
Priska Pasquer Gallery (Cologne)
The gallery is presenting three female artists: Rinko Kawauchi with a selection of works from her “Utatane” and “Aila series (see Statement section, under Foil Gallery); Mika Ninagawa with her “Liquid Dreams” series (see Statement section under Tomio Koyama Gallery) and Asako Narahashi (b.1959) with her series entitled “Half Awake Half Asleep in the Water.” The artist began this colour series in 2001. It shows images of the Japanese coast taken at water level. Using a waterproof 35mm camera,the artists immerses herself in the sea, letting herself float upon the waves.The result is representations of a floating world, suspended between sea and sky, visions that are at times magical and at others threatening.
Rose Gallery (Santa Monica)
The gallery presents a selection of prints from the series “Half Awake Half Asleep in the Water”by Asako Narahashi (see under Priska Pasquer Gallery) as well as recent work by Mikiko Hara.
Taro Nasu (Tokyo)
An artist of the young generation, Maiko Haruki (b. 1974) creates dark, apparently abstract images that suggest a scene, a stage, a place where there are no references, rather like the Black Out that follows lights out at the end of an act or play in a theatre or performance.The anti-sceptic images of building hallways or office corridors in the work of Hirofumi Katayama (b. 1980) are misleading.The images are entirely computer-generated, the product of algorithms named “Vectorscapes” by the artist. Yuki Tawada (b. 1978) is fascinated by masshysteria as a phenomenon. She creates dreamlike scenes of anonymous crowds gathered in a sort of cosmic opera with special effects obtained by scraping the surface of the image with an abrasive tool such as a razor blade or sand-paper. The manipulated images of Cozue Tagaki (b. 1985) suggest the passing flow of chaotic remembrance in the memory of an amnesiac, a fantasy world in which species and gender, dream and reality fuse into one.

Villa Grisebach Auktionen will hold its fall auctions in modern and contemporary photography in Berlin with more than 240 lot numbers for sale. Spearheaded by Larry Clark’s (*1943) portfolio Tulsa, published in 1980, with an estimate of 40,000-60,000 EUR, Villa Grisebach starts off its fall auction of modern and contemporary photography with an American classic. Including fifty images, Clark’s portfolio documents the youth scene of his hometown in the late 1960s with an unsparing and direct attitude. Other masterpieces offered in this sale are the well-known Portfolio 1, a compilation of distinct compositions executed by the renown German architectural photographer Werner Mantz (1901-1983) and published by Edition Galerie Schürmann & Kicken in 1977 (estimate of 12,000-18,000 EUR), as well as a photograph by Ruth Orkin (1921-1985) entitled American Girl in Italy, which by now has been recognized as an icon in the history of photography (estimate of 8,000-10,000 EUR). Photographs by Albert Renger-Patzsch (1897-1966) will be represented in this auction with a series of garden landscapes depicting the country estate of the Warburg family near Hamburg. Commonly considered as rarities, two exceptional vintage prints are also on sale this fall: a portrait of Ellen Auerbach by Grete Stern (estimate of 3,000-4,000 EUR) and an image taken by the American photographer Helen Levitt depicting James Agee. In addition, the fall photography auction will offer works by Josef Maria Eder & Eduard Valenta, William Henry Fox Talbot, Félix Teynard, and Eadweard Muybridge (19th century) among others, as well as works by Bernd & Hilla Becher, Erwin Blumenfeld, Robert Capa, Frantisek Drtikol, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Hugo Erfurth, Andreas Feininger, Man Ray, Martin Munkàcsi, and Erich Salomon.

For a number of years, the section featuring contemporary photography has experienced an emphasis within the photography sales conducted by Villa Grisebach Auctions. The artists represented in this section vary from familiar names to possibly new discoveries. Top lot in this segment, this fall, is an early work by Andreas Gursky (*1955) entitled Teneriffa, Bajamar produced in 1987 (estimate of 40,000-60,000 EUR). Other remarkable works are Shirin Neshat’s I am it’s Secret (estimate of 6,000-8,000 EUR), Peter Beard’s Polaroid Loliondo Lion Charge (estimate of 2,500-3,500 EUR) as well as three examples of Jörg Sasse’s celebrated color landscape photographs (estimate each with 6,000-8,000 EUR). Furthermore, photography coming out of the Scandinavian schools will be represented in this sale with two rather picturesque works by Olafur Eliasson from his Iceland series (estimate each with 7,000-9,000 EUR), a large-format, panoramic image entitled Qaanaaq by Tiina Itkonen (estimate of 8,000-12,000 EUR), as well as two small, b/w photographs by Pentti Sammallahti (estimate each with 800-1,200 EUR). Works by internationally renowned photographers such as Sebastiao Salgado, Stephen Shore, Massimo Vitali, Bettina Rheims, Gregory Crewdson, and Robert Mapplethorpe will complement the offer in Villa Grisebach’s contemporary photography sales this fall.

This is one of the "don't-miss-articles". The Young Gallery Bruxelles presents absolutely fascinating landscape photographs from all around the world by the austrian artist Josef Hoflehner till Friday. Josef Hoflehner (1955) lives in Austria but works everywhere: he has long held a fascination with secluded places and empty spaces and since the early 1990's, he has worked in some of the most remote and forbidding areas of the world; including Antarctica, Vietnam, China, Japan, the Yemen, Iceland, and most recently, the Deep South of the United States. This exhibition will draw from each. His black and white images are seen in dream-time – where everything is slowed down and the landscapes are reduced to elemental and painterly shapes; they are sublime, and quiet - and offer us something not picked up by the naked eye in real-time. The prints remember resemble the black-and-white landscape photographs of Michael Kenna. The IPA (International Photography Awards) last year voted Hoflehner Nature Photographer of the Year 2007.

A certain kind of photography returns to the landscape some of those qualities which the eighteenth century thought of collectively as the ‘sublime’, in which grandeur and proportion are offset by a certain sense of horror, and the awful power of nature is the measure of the true littleness of man. Photography is always more or less literal, but this kind of landscape makes no apology for demanding always to be treated also as metaphorical. Josef Hoflehner is becoming one of the most distinguished exponents of this kind of landscape. You cannot look at Hoflehner’s tiny Statue of Liberty on its swampy island without thinking of those lagoony cultures which dot the world, Venice foremost among them, where the works of man are always under immediate threat. We have become used, since 11th September 2001, to thinking of Manhattan threatened. Seen like this, a rise in Atlantic water level of no more than a few inches looks like a permanent dreadful risk. Hoflehner has a gift for this kind of thing, and he also works very hard at it.

Modern sublime photography has a variety of origins. There is a British lineage whereby black-and-white is as a much a moral spectrum as a chemical one. The landscapes of Bill Brandt, their contrast ever-increasing as he grew older, are forerunners, and Hoflehner certainly inherits some of their manner, perhaps via such great developers of the Brandtian line as Michael Kenna. Another line comes ultimately from pre-photographic arts in Japan, calligraphy or wood block, and is passed on through the great poets of the less-is-more such as Hiroshi Sugimoto or Shoji Ueda. Yet another tradition derives from nineteenth century landscape photography. Hoflehner’s treatment of water, in particular, harks backward with his lovely long slow exposures giving water back its fluidity after so many years of being frozen at 1/250th sec.

None of this is accidental. Hoflehner’s materials are sparse but his messaging is wonderfully rich. The best of his pictures can be looked at again and again, precisely because they ask us as viewers to test our conclusions and check our metaphorical reading. This tiny tree, propped up by a taut support on either side: is it a prisoner or a patient? Those huge numbered concrete tidal defences in geometrical shapes: futile playthings for the next storm, or final vindication of Canute? Not the least of the many virtues of Hoflehner’s pictures is that they simply insist that you be engaged when you view them. You may not be able to tell Josef Hoflehner’s politics on a simple arc from right-wing to left-wing, but you will certainly see an active engagement with the land and with what we do to it. This is not the photography of someone who wants us merely to see that he is right about this or that; there is plenty enough of that in the world already. More sympathetically, this is the photography of someone who wants us to ask ourselves if we have allied quite enough thinking to our viewing before we trust our conclusions.

In most photography, the air is transparent and takes no great part in how we see things. In Hoflehner, the air always has a density of its own, and we must strain to part it with our eyes. It’s not just that he particularly likes effects of condensation or of twilight, but more that he expects us to see as slowly as he does. He once made a series of studies of windsocks, those flappy orange cones on airfields which indicate wind strength and speed. To most of us, they are mildly recognisable objects which we see when we fly and then forget. Hoflehner made whole essays out of them. They became man-made structures in an apparently natural environment, they became visible manifestations of invisible weather, they were to some extent economic indicators, they were hard lines and soft all in the same trivial objects. This is his manner: to look for something to think about as well as something to see. We can be sure that the reason he invites us to see the finished selection is because he has found something, even perhaps something not very important, in every single view.

There is a peculiar verb in English which doesn’t decline very well, the verb to matter. Hoflehner expects his pictures to matter. They’re pretty enough, of course they are, and a pleasure simply to sample with the eye. But if you think of any view in this collection merely as a pleasantly harmonious frameful of grey tones, you haven’t done thinking about it. Because Josef Hoflehner photographs with the full resources of his wide culture fully engaged. This is not the photography of f/stops and film grades. This is the rarer photography, of someone who wants to address an audience and expects us to be moved and thoughtful in return. And in the proper sense of the word, it approaches the sublime.

Francis Hodgson Francis Hodgson has been a photographic curator for many years; he is currently the photography critic for the Financial Times and Head of Photographs at Sotheby’s.

Photography is present everywhere. It plays a formative role in all societies and in private, public, intimate, commercial, and “free” areas of our lives. It is also present in the closed off areas, there where it is “dark,” where we withdraw from society, or where acts are excluded from society. For eroticism, sexuality, desire, and identity, photography is a central visual tool: as document, stimulation, instrument of power, and as artistic form of expression. The exhibition Darkside at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, discusses photography as an instrument of representation and as an important visual catalyst of sexuality. Photography shows and stylizes lust and passion, fantasy and desire, power and violence, voyeurism and self-presentation in sexuality. Fantasy and desire form a thrilling pact with photography: sexual fantasies demand representation; they seek to be revealed—and photography, with its voyeuristic streak, makes use of the power of (pictorial) eroticism for its own ends, in order to gain power and be seductive.

Darkside presents this photography and discusses it in numerous detailed essays. The exhibition and book are dedicated to photographs of ideal, natural and grotesque bodies, among others. The project conceives of sexuality as part of existence, presenting photographs of sexual practices, desires and phantasms. Sexuality is discussed in surrealism and reflected in its objectivisation and fetishisation; voyeurism is confronted with exhibitionism; sexuality and the body are dealt with within the context of gender debates and, finally, as power and as business. In the process, it is always about the images that we make of “sexuality,” and about the endless blurring of fantasy and reality in photography that has taken place in the last one hundred years. The room has long been dark and dark is the night that gives the city and desire freedom and strength; “dark” is above all else the metaphor of connecting, flowing, swallowing up—of body, soul and spirit— which has taken place since time immemorial at the centre of life, of events, yet been excluded from society. That is, at least until pornography at the end of the twentieth century began to cast a cool, harsh economic light into the dim and warm areas of the body.
With works of more than 150 photographers, such as Brassaï, Bill Brandt, Hans Bellmer, Man Ray, Pierre Molinier, Germaine Krull, Frantisek Drtikol, Claude Cahun, Christer Stroemholm, Anders Petersen, Ed van der Elsken, Walter Chappell, Peter Hujar, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, Nan Goldin, Valie Export, Carolee Schneemann, Urs Lüthi, Hannah Villiger, Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Arno Nollen, Paul Armand Gette, and many others.