Photography: 1982: Aperture 93

Arts & Photography

Holborn, Mark

Chahroudi, Martha

Photography & Video

Aperture Direct

"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

Mark Holborn

L'Anonyme

Gibson, R.

Gibson, Ralph

Collects more than 175 photographs of subjects such as artists, soldiers, New York City, and Paris

Andre Kertesz Diary

Kertész, André

Hinson, Hal

Spiritual America

BALLARD,J.G.

PRINCE, Richard

Literature & Fiction

Book by Aperture Foundation Inc. Staff

Immagini Italiane: Aperture 132

APERTURE

Loving, sparring, partying, cavorting, drinking, smacking, preening--the boisterous family crowding the canvas of British photographer Nick Waplington's The Wedding has spirit to spare. "The opposite of instant pictures," writes novelist and critic John Berger of Waplington's work, "these photos are as lasting for a lifetime as tattoos, yet all they show is a split second. . . . Life breathes through every one." Over the course of four years, Waplington became intimately acquainted with two large, working-class families residing in a municipal housing estate in Nottingham, England. The resulting book, Living Room (Aperture, 1991), proved the photographer had achieved an entirely unself-conscious relationship with his subjects. Five years later, Waplington is still shooting. He revisits his Nottingham friends in The Wedding, a colorful, lively visual narrative with the mesmerizing flow of a soap opera. Times have changed in one of the living rooms. The kids are older and Mum is on the verge of a new marriage. With the wedding as a centerpiece, Waplington plunges into the midst of a communal group whose upbeat lifestyle seems able to overcome all obstacles. Waplington's vibrant color images and text pulse with a visceral energy that cannot fail to draw us in. Presenting domestic drama at its most immeditately engaging and contemporary photography at its most free-wheeling, Nick Waplington's The Wedding is a singular artistic experience. Working with Waplington, the cuting-edge British writer Irvine Welsh, author of Acid House, contributes an essay illuminating the social and political context for Waplington's work. Waplington also provides a personal introduction chronicling the evolution of the "Living Room" project, his intensely close relationship with his extended family, and the nine years he has spent photographing them.

The Wedding: New Pictures from the Continuing Living Room Series

WELSH, IRVINE

Waplington, Nick

Individual Artists

Manuel Alvarez Bravo began photographing in 1924, during Mexico's thriving post-revolutionary artistic renaissance. His influences, from indigenous cultures to contemporary European trends, combined through his artistry to form a unique, transcendent vision rooted in the iconography of his country. While his early work embraced Mexico's urban realities, its peasants and workers, and its hauntingly beautiful landscape, Alvarez Bravo's ever-present acknowledgment of the macabre prompted André Breton, the leader of Surrealism in France, to claim him as an exponent of the movement. Prolific, uncompromising, and committed to advancing the arts of his country, nevertheless, public recognition eluded Alvarez Bravo, even in Mexico, until the 1970s, when his photographs were exhibited at the Pasadena Art Museum in California and at New York's Museum of Modern Art, in 1971. But it was not until 1997 that his work became widely known through a definitive exhibit of 185 photographs at the Museum of Modern Art and the simultaneous publication by Aperture of Manuel Alvarez Bravo: Photographs and Memories. Manuel Alvarez Bravo won his first award in 1931, and then decided to pursue photography as a career. He met André Breton in 1939, and his work was subsequently included in Surrealist exhibitions in Paris. In 1942, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired their first works by Alvarez Bravo; in 1955, his photographs were included in Edward Steichen'sFamily of Man exhibition at MoMa. In 1959 Alvarez Bravo co-founded the Fondo Editorial de la Plástica Mexicana, with the goal of publishing books on Mexican art, which he co-directed until 1980, and from 1980 to 1986, he devoted his time to founding and developing the collection of the first Mexican Museum of Photography. Alvarez Bravo is the recipient of the Sourasky Art Prize (1974), the National Art Prize (Mexico, 1975), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1975), the Victor and Erna Hasselblad Prize (1984), and the International Center of Photography's Master of Photography Award (1987). Manuel Alvarez Bravo: Photographs and Memories presents an intimate portrait of Mexico's revered photographer and, with his most beloved images, includes a selection of little-known work chosen with the photographer specifically for this classic monograph.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo: Photographs and Memories: Aperture 147

Anant

Aperture 154 Explorations: Nine Portfolios Winter 1999 Aperture's second Explorations issue presents heretofore undiscovered images by photographers whose work is bound to become widely known. They probe the metaphysical through ritual, invoke dark metaphors in circus performance, find religion in nocturnal deserts, and study the ties that bind. The convergence of these uniquely powerful images and the artists' personal stories provokes an examination of the ever expanding boundaries of contemporary photography. Artists included are Stephen Barker, Neil Folberg, Jill Graham, Kimberly Gremillion, Jan van Leeuwen, Anne Arden McDonald, Andreas Rentsch, Maruch Sántiz Gómez, and Dayanita Singh.

Explorations: Nine Portfolios: Aperture 154 (Aperture Magazine S)

Aperture Foundation Inc. Staff

APERTURE 154

Aperture 155 Optical Allusions: New Perspectives in Spanish Photography Spring 1999 Optical Allusions: New Perspectives in Spanish Photography explores a range of images and perspectives that emerged from a group of photographers in Spain during the 1990s. Eleven portfolios selected for their overlapping thematic and stylistic approaches reveal a rich and idiosyncratic photographic vision, in tune with international developments in photography and the arts. Commentary by the photographers such as Javier Vallhonrat, Pablo Genovés, and Chema Madoz, provides additional insight into the ideas and practices behind their work. Photographers: Daniel Canogar, Pablo Genovés, Cristobal Hara, Eduard Ibañez, Chema Madoz, Ana Teresa Ortega, María José Gómez Redondo, Jorge Ribalta, Javier Vallhonrat, Valentin Vallhonrat

Optical Allusions: New Perspectives in Spanish Photography: Aperture 155 (Aperture Magazine S)

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