Category Archives: Japanese photography

March Madness: 1 month, 2 exhibitions

Blogging has been slow this month since I am curating two exhibitions opening in March. The first of these, Tokyo Stories, with work by Hiroshi Hamaya, Tadahiko Hayashi and Shigeichi Nagano, opens at Stockholm’s Kulturhuset on 6 March. I’ll be giving a talk from 1-3pm that day on Japanese photography and photographing Tokyo, so for [...]
Also posted in Events, eyecurious News | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Plastic, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways

Megumi Tomomitsu is fond of the plastic bag. She has even compiled a pretty exhaustive list of reasons why. For someone (and somehow I think I am not alone here) who stores hundreds of the things for absolutely no discernable reason, this interests me. Thinking about it, I probably own more plastic bags than photobooks, [...]
Also posted in Asian photography, On a lighter note | Tagged | Leave a comment

Review: Japanese photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s

Ivan Vartanian and Ryuichi Kaneko’s Japanese photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s belongs to a new breed of photobook: the book on books. Martin Parr and Gerry Badger’s two-volume history of the photobook is probably the best known of these, but there are other interesting examples. Jeff Ladd’s Errata Editions is taking this one step [...]
Also posted in Asian photography, Book reviews, Collecting, Photo-books | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Shomei Tomatsu, As Salaam Alaykum

For any Tokyoites out there, Gallery 21 will be showing a selection of works from a lesser-known series of Shomei Tomatsu’s work next month. Although he has never been to Europe or the United States, Tomatsu has done his share of wandering around Asia and in the 1960s he made a trip to Afghanistan, which [...]
Posted in Japanese photography | Tagged | Leave a comment

Interview: Hiroh Kikai, A man in the cosmos

I first met Hiroh Kikai in 2007 after discovering his portraits taken over several decades in Askausa, Tokyo, in his stunning book Persona. A collection of these photographs entitled Asakusa Portraits has since been published by Steidl. On a trip to Japan in May 2008, I managed to sit down with Kikai for an interview [...]
Also posted in Interviews | Tagged | 3 Comments

Yasutaka Kojima

I met Yasutaka Kojima at Photoquai in Paris last year. I don’t know that much about him apart from the fact that he studied with Masato Seto, a former assistant of Daido Moriyama’s and a terrific photographer in his own right. Kojima is based in New York, where I think he is still completing his [...]
Also posted in Asian photography, One to watch | Tagged | Leave a comment

Tokyo highlights

eyecurious has made a slow start to blogging in 2010. However, this was due to a great, albeit far too short trip to Tokyo. I was in Japan preparing two exhibitions that will open in Stockholm, Sweden and in Cologne, Germany in March of this year (more on these in the coming weeks) and laying [...]
Also posted in Asian photography, Exhibition reviews, Projects, eyecurious News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Review: Andrew Phelps, Not Niigata

As soon as I heard the name of Andrew Phelps’s latest book I was intrigued. Niigata is not the most obvious prefecture in Japan for a foreign photographer to choose as a photographic subject (Tokyo’s magnetic pull certainly doesn’t seem to be weakening). I was all the more interested as Niigata is an area of some [...]
Also posted in American photography, Book reviews, European photography, Photo-books, Projects | Tagged , | Leave a comment

bookshop M

One of the discoveries that I made at Paris Photo this year was the Japanese bookseller, bookshop M, situated right at the entrance of the fair. There is so much work to see on the walls that I sometimes find it difficult to find the time to spend with all of the books that are on [...]
Also posted in Magazines, Photo-books | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Yamashita Tsuneo

Yamashita Tsuneo’s website has some great work that shows just how far you can go with simplicity. (via mcvmcv)
Also posted in Asian photography, One to watch | Tagged | Leave a comment

Bad Behavior has blocked 592 access attempts in the last 7 days.