Old Japanese photography and French New Wave ramble.

It’s not news that I like Japanese photography from the 60s and 70s (see posts, here, here, here, here).  Why is for much the same reasons I return often to French New Wave cinema.  Call that reason a stripped down aesthetic which verges on a sensual brutality.  Nearly able to chew on it.  But what saves it from being trite w/ brutality, is a delve headfirst into the subconscious – wait, no, subconscious might prompt something psychoanalytic.  That’s too much for here.  But by subconscious I mean the very deepest and most uncontrolled and most fundamental mechanisms taking place in our minds.  I guess it’d be easiest to just call it, our dreams.  (Makes me think of Joyce writing in Ulysses, “history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”)  It’s a documentation of an entirely different sorts, and it makes the work not brutal, but rather almost unbearably human and gentle.

I’m not informed enough to make theories on the reasons, the whys of parallel creative evolutions, but just look at Shomei Tomatsu’s work and then go watch Chris Marker‘s short film, La Jetee (here).  Breathe deep.


photo: still from Chris Marker’s film La Jetee

Or, make a literal French to Japan connection w/ Hiroshima Mon Amour by, Alain Resnais (like Marker – and also Agnes Varda – one of the Left Bank New Wavers).


photo: still from Alain Resnais’ film Hiroshima Mon Amour

There isn’t going to be order here though.   Ramblings.  B/c what I really wanted to do was just list some old Japanese photography.  The inspiration being a well done new book out by Aperture Foundation called Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s, which reminded me recently how important this work is.

Jun Morinaga, namely his book River: It’s Shadow of Shadow:


photo: from River by Jun Morinaga


photo: from River by Jun Morinaga

(These tiny and poor jpegs are not doubt not representative of the quality of this work – this stuff is not easy to find on the internet…a fact that gives me a little hope this morning.)

Masahisa Fukase, and his series Solitude of the Ravens:


photo: from Solitude of the Ravens by Masahisa Fukase


photo: from Solitude of the Ravens by Masahisa Fukase


photo: from Solitude of the Ravens by Masahisa Fukase

Tetsuya Ichimura, who’s work is almost impossible to find online, but he’s done a number of books, all now very rare I think:


photo: from Salome by Tetsuya Ichimura


photo: from Salome by Tetsuya Ichimura


photo: from Salome by Tetsuya Ichimura

Nobuyoshi Araki, who we all know as a photographer of gorgeous flowers and gorgeous bound women, but his book Sentimental Journey reveals a side of him little known.  This older work is, again, almost non-existent online.


photo: from Sentimental Journey by Nobuyoshi Araki

Eikoh Hosoe, who I’d not heard of until just recently:


photo: by Eikoh Hosoe

And a few more obvious ones I’ve touched on before on this site and who are very well known, Shōmei Tōmatsu,


photo: by Shōmei Tōmatsu

For God’s sake, now that (↑) is photography.


photo: by Shōmei Tōmatsu

and Daidō Moriyama:


photo: by Daidō Moriyama

A friend recently offered me a simple and apt definition of good art, saying it “is something people want to experience again…after seeing it they immediately want to relive it, and then again and again.”  This work then, to me, is good art.

Yes Yes.  Tremendous.

Comments
One Response to “Old Japanese photography and French New Wave ramble.”
  1. Man, that first picture really and utterly blew my mind. Genius! That’s what photography ought to be.