A study of postwar Japan through the work of its leading photographers, artists and fashion designers. Starting with the devastating experience of 1945, the book traces how the transformations in Japanese society were reflected in the visual imagery of the culture. The book provides a guide to the creative forces that have most profoudly effected modern Japan, from the writer, Yukio Mishima to the fashion designer, Issey Miyake. Although Tokyo is the axis of this work, the book finally points to the emergence in the Nineties of a new generation of creative figures who have become major international artists. The new Japan is not a distant, alien culture, as it was a century ago. The book addresses the whole spectrum of Japanese art, photography, design, cinema and architecture.

Beyond Japan: A photo theatre

Arts & Photography

Mark Holborn

Photography & Video

Jonathan Cape Limited

"The photographs as "ruins" and the "ruins" in the photographs overlap and when the newly emanated feeling for time is marked into the center of the photographs, the ruins are not the carcasses of destruction and devastation, but turn away from being coffins, symbols of death, and move the hub to the mysterious stage of life."--Shunji ItoBlack Sun is an unprecedented portrait of postwar Japan through the eyes of four of the nation's most significant photographers. It encompasses and connects ancient Japanese prophecies, the terror of nuclear destruction, and the results of swift and massive westernization.Eikoh Hosoe, Shomei Tomatsu, Masahisa Fukase, and Daido Moriyama are widely acknowledged in Japan as masters of photography. Their work ranges from the metaphoric to the documentary, from the presentation of post-apocalyptic artifacts to portraits of crows and crowded city streets. However varied the approach, this work is unified by a sense of innovation and a persistent search for native roots.Eikoh Hosoe's representation of the demonic myth Kamaitachi is structured like a dance, enacted among the villagers of the far north country and evoking Hosoe's childhood memories of the final years of World War II.Shomei Tomatsu's work ranges from the legacy of Nagasaki to the student riots of the sixties. His photographs combine social documentary with a search for personal identity, a quest which concludes among the remote islanders of Okinawa.Masahisa Fukase's epic series Crow adopts the universal symbol of the black bird as evil omen. The crow's somber presence shadows Fukase's journey to his birthplace on the northern island of Hokkaido, fusing private memories to a darker, national heritage.Daido Moriyama uncovers the malice lurking in the alleys and backstreets of Tokyo. With his confrontational, highly graphic style, Moriyama reveals the overpowering density of life in modern Japan.In the accompanying text, Mark Holborn creates his own picture of Japan's creative climate, one in which audacious exploration crashes against a legacy of tradition and refinement. He s20provides previously undocumented links between the photographers and other leading Japanese artists of our time, such as filmmaker Nagisa Oshima, graphic designer Tadanori Yokoo, and dancer Tatsumi Hijikata.Ultimately, the dark lyricism of Black Sun serves as both cultural introduction and global prophecy. The shadow cast by these four photographers stretches beyond the shores of Japan and across the entire length of contemporary experience.

Black Sun: The Eyes of Four, Roots and Innovation in Japanese Photography

Aperture Direct

Josef Breitenbach Photographer

Temple Rock Company

“Payson’s photographs of the NBA playoffs, I soon realized, are deeply woven into this paranoid, paranormal, paramedia web. From April through June 2001, Payson watched every game in the playoffs, camera glued to his eye, through the final triumph of the Lakers over the Sixers. He shot about two hundred rolls of color film, which amounts to over 3,200 frames. A selection of about ninety is reproduced here. Mostly photographed off an eighty-inch projection-screen TV, they are indelible impressions of the ghost in the machine of American image culture.” —Mia Fineman A riveting journey deep into the dark heart of the American Dream, Eric Payson’s Gladiators are photographs of the 2001 NBA playoffs shot off a wide-screen television. These pictures are about more than mere basketball—they explore our obsession with entertainment and voyeurism, expose our lust for the controlled violence and stylized pageantry of spectator sports, investigate the innate themes of racial politics and male bonding, and examine the electronic medium that transmits it all. Payson, a child of the American media, turned his living room TV screen into a virtual box seat at the Roman Colosseum to create Gladiators, a compelling examination of our fixation with professional sports.

Gladiators

Mia Fineman

Payson, Eric

powerHouse Books

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Books by Mark Holborn