Originally published by Yale University Press in 1960, Katsura: Tradition and Creation of Japanese Architecture is the most significant photographic publication about the relationship of modernity and tradition in postwar Japan. Designed by famed Bauhaus graphic artist Herbert Bayer, Katsura comprises 135 black-and-white photographs by Ishimoto Yasuhiro depicting the 17th-century Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto, with essays by architects Walter Gropius and Tange Kenzo.
This new publication argues that Tange, motivated by a desire to transform the architectural images into abstract fragments, played a major role in cropping and sequencing Ishimoto’s photographs for the book. The author provides a fresh and critical look at the nature of the collaboration between Tange and Ishimoto, exploring how their words and images helped establish a new direction in modern Japanese architecture. The book serves as an important contribution to the growing scholarly field of post-1945 Japanese art, in particular the juncture of photography and architecture.

Katsura: Picturing Modernism in Japanese Architecture: Photographs by Ishimoto Yasuhiro

Arts & Photography

Nakamori, Yasufumi

History & Criticism

Museum Fine Arts Houston

From the time of its invention, photography has enabled artists not only to capture the world around them but also to create worlds of their own. Utopia/Dystopia investigates how artists from the late 19th century to the present have used photographic fragments or techniques to represent political, social, or cultural states of utopia or dystopia. Artists have employed a number of strategies to this end, such as cutting, fragmenting, and puncturing images as well as reassembling those culled from ready-made materials or giving a subject multiple exposures. The resulting photographs, photocollages, photomontages, and other creations question the validity of seamless pictorial images, and attempt to dismantle the notion of photography as an objective medium.
This publication features approximately forty-five exemplary works by artists such as Herbert Bayer, John Heartfield, Hannah Höch, Arata Isozaki, El Lissitzky, Carter Mull, László Moholy-Nagy, Vik Muniz, Man Ray, Okanoue Toshiko, and many others. Also included are essays that offer new ways of thinking about photography's uses and implications.

Utopia/Dystopia: Construction and Destruction in Photography and Collage

Bader, Graham

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

In Japan, the student protests and avant-garde art initiatives of the late 1960s gave way to political apathy, economic uncertainties, and an introspective tendency in art. As a result, many artists sought different avenues of expression, using photography in experimental and conceptual ways as part of their larger artistic practice. Many photographers also responded by moving away from a straight documentary approach, some displaying their images in series and installations as works of art. For a New World to Come provides a thought-provoking look at photography-based works and other works by twenty-nine of these artists, including such well-known names as Nobuyoshi Araki, Koji Enokura, Daido Moriyama, Hitoshi Nomura, and Jiro Takamatau, as well as others who are less familiar but no less important. International scholars discuss their innovative works, many of which have not been published previously outside Japan. They also shed light on the important artistic collectives, photographic journals, and independent exhibition spaces of the era, offering fresh perspectives on this critical period in art and photography in Japan.

For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968 1979

Pappas, Allison

As Japan Rising reveals, contemporary art in Japan goes beyond the "New Pop" forms of Takashi Murakami. Included are 14 up-and-coming artists representing diverse artistic practices, from the ethereal, minimalist canvases of Yoshie Sakai, to the undulating sculptures of Keisen Hama, and the colorfully coiffed portraits of Tam Ochiai.

Japan Rising

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art

Tate Photography Liz Johnson-Artur /anglais

Photography & Video

Tate

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Books by Nakamori, Yasufumi