Published in the late 1990s, an allegedly final History of photography In Japan, zero women through her 40 volumes. During the first 25 years of its existence, the prestigious Kimura Ihei photography prize in the country was granted to only three women. And the art gallery of the Lehigh University of Pennsylvania organized a 1989 exposure Dedicated to the women Japanese photographers – one of the first of its kind – after being forced to cancel a show which originally included men, who all withdrew by learning that the work of women would be displayed alongside theirs. In such an environment, as the scientist Takeuchi Mariko writes, women artists “have stubbornly forged their own paths alone”.
Takeuchi meditation on dissident women is at the center of I am so happy that you are here: Japanese photographers from the 1950s to nowwhich refers to these three historical examples, is in no way limited to them, because it provides vital responses to gaps and long -standing elimination. Published by the conservative of the photograph of the Brooklyn Museum Pauline Vermare and the executive director of the printing Lesley A. Martin, the book contains sumptuous reproductions of the work of more than 60 Japanese photographers with more than a dozen tests and interviews by researchers, conservatives and artists, some of which are published for the first time in English. This vast publication accompanies a traveling of the same name and is an essential resource for any reader who wants to understand photography in Japan, his practitioners and their contexts.
Despite their persistent erasure, Japanese women have been involved in photography since his arrival in the country in the late 1850s. 1998 reprinted trial of the conservative Fuku Noriko for the catalog of An incomplete story Trace this neglected heritage of the revolutionary studio photographer from the 19th century Ryū Shima to the first women photojournalists in Japan in the 1940s. Although the book focuses on artists working from the middle of the 20th century, this texts and other texts that search the practices of previous photographers tell a more complete story on the production of subsequent artists.
Another highlight is the interview with historian Kelly Midori McCormick, the revolutionary, the revolutionary photographer Tokiwa Toyoko (1930-2019), including the 1957 photobook Kiken na adabana (“Dangerous poison flowers”) constantly tells the life of Harscrabble sex workers and other women working in post-war yokohama. At a time of great resistance, Tokiwa has cut a path for itself with an amazing determination. Photograph, she says to McCormick, “means doing something that no one else does.”
The book seems to prove Tokiwa's point. It presents an astonishing variety of approaches to the medium, through extended artists and photo extracts. Street plans, multimedia collages, experimental photograms, elaborate immobile lives and other works collectively present an alternative history of politics and sexuality in Japan, as in the snapshots of student protests from Watanabe Hitomi at the end of the 1960s and Okinawa from Okinawa.
On a more intimate scale, the tender tender and white scenes of daily domestic life of daily domestic life of the 1970s and the 80s contrast strongly with the ironic criticism of Sawada Tomoko female beauty standards of the early 2000s and recent saturated portraits of the transformation saturated by Okabe.
Thanks to their multifaceted work, these artists have documented and shaped significant changes to women in Japan. However, this year, Japan was ranked 118th of 146 countries in the Global report on the gap between the sexes. This book celebrates the earnings, while keeping us vigilant on hard work behind them.
I am so happy that you are here: Japanese photographers from the 1950s to now (2024), edited by Pauline Vermare and Lesley A. Martin, is published by Aperture and is available online and via independent booksellers.
