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UC Santa Barbara Library Award for Undergraduate Research Winners UC Santa Barbara Library Award for Undergraduate Research Winners Title New Japanese Photography (1974): An Introduction to Postwar Japanese Photography Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7gw8x543 Author Ando, Stephanie Publication Date 2021 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California LIBRARY AWARD FOR UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH Second Place Humanities & Fine Arts www.library.ucsb.edu Ando 1 Stephanie Ando UCSB Library Award Reflective Essay As a yonsei, fourth generation Japanese American, I have been actively involved in researching my family history and culture. In particular, I am interested in Japanese photography as a form of political activism and expression. Professor McLemore’s Survey of Contemporary Photography at the Museum of Modern Art Seminar allowed me to apply my personal research to a formal academic setting. I chose to study New Japanese Photography (1974), curated by John Szarkowski and Camera Mainichi editor, Shoji Yamagishi. This project required academic sources and show reviews from established newspapers or magazines. In order to succeed in this project and my future research goals in graduate school, I was determined to solely find scholarly sources. At first, my initial Google and JSTOR search appeared promising, but I could not find formal reviews of the photography show from established newspapers or magazines. Moreover, the exhibition date of 1974 appeared to serve as an additional hurdle because of the lack of digitized materials. I began to feel defeated until I recalled a presentation Chizu Morihara gave during Professor Carole Paul’s seminar Museums in Transition: From the Early Modern to the Modern Period during Fall Quarter of 2020. In this presentation, Chizu provided an in-depth tutorial on how to utilize UC Santa Barbara Library’s website with an emphasis on how to find digital archives as the library’s in-person services were temporarily unavailable. The physical library restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic proved to be painless as Chizu explained the steps for how to utilize the Research Guides for art and architecture. The class guide served as an incredible resource for Professor Paul’s seminar, as well as using the Advanced Search for books and article pdfs. The introduction to diving beyond JSTOR and Google Scholar aided me in my future courses. Ando 2 Chizu’s presentation provided a foundation for in-depth art and architecture research, but I began to experience additional difficulties in researching dated, unusual material. Finding academic sources on a smaller scale photography show in the 1970s proved to be a challenge beyond the basic Research Guide or ArtStor search. Initially, I tried to perform a search on ArtStor for my project’s images. However, prior to the 1970s, Japanese photography primarily existed as series in print books instead of in galleries or museums. After hours of frustration, I finally made a research appointment with Chizu. She introduced me to utilizing ArtStor through the library website, searching historical newspapers through a power search with ARTbibliographies Modern, and how to access UC E-links for digitized versions of the sources. After practicing the research process Chizu introduced, I found photography magazines I read as assigned class readings but struggled to find on my own. For example, I found multiple interviews for the photographer Daido Moriyama with Aperture magazine, a highly-regarded photography magazine that enriched my personal understanding of Moriyama’s work. The UCSB Library also introduced me to Artforum, an international contemporary art magazine, where I found Max Kozloff’s understanding of the show as denying white middle-class viewers confirmation bias on Japanese photography. Without access to the Aperture or Artforum articles, my research would be limited to the show’s press release and completely disregard the public’s relationship with New Japanese Photography (1974). The UCSB Library’s materials and access to other institutions provide full coverage of niche topics that are equally deserving of attention and research. As a senior graduating with degrees in art history and political science, writing papers rich with academic discourse and high-quality images is imperative for my academic and career goals. The library has enhanced my research skills by offering an incredible collection of Ando 3 physical and digital materials. However, I found the class presentation and my research appointment with Chizu Morihara as advantageous as the materials themselves. I believe working directly with library researchers improves accessibility in higher education, especially as a first-generation college student like myself. Despite remote requirements to ensure everyone’s safety in the COVID-19 pandemic, the library continues to provide an expansive collection of resources for students. Although I am graduating, I will take the research skills I learned from the UCSB Library to every professional setting and provide this academic accessibility in my career. Ando 1 Stephanie Ando McLemore ARTHI 186T 14 March 2021 New Japanese Photography (1974): An Introduction to Postwar Japanese Photography John Szarkowski, curator of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) from 1962 to 1991, and Shoji Yamagishi, editor of Camera Mainichi magazine from 1963 to 1978, collaborated to produce MoMA’s New Japanese Photography, 1974 (New Japanese Photography 1974). New Japanese Photography, studies the evolution of postwar Japanese photography from traditional Japanese media to documentary photographs outside of Japan in 187 black and white images from fifteen male photographers (New Japanese Photography 1974). The Museum of Modern Art’s book dedicated to the show begins with Ken Domon’s classic interpretation of the eighth-century Muro-ji temple and transitions to photography dictating the westernization of Japan (New Japanese Photography 1974). This paper will focus on the three of the most featured artists, Shomei Tomatsu, Daido Moriyama, and Eikoh Hosoe, as they represent the result of Japanese photography’s evolution in the 1970s. While Szarkowski and Yamagishi’s show, New Japanese Photography, 1974, is limited in scope to 187 images, the photographers defy the Japanese photography stereotypes through their perspectives from postwar Japan. As Japanese life changes postwar, photographers capture the developments that surround them. The introduction of the show argues Japanese photography preceding the show in the previous two decades were the result of, “three factors: the patent bankruptcy of the prewar tradition of photographic pictorialism, the national fascination with as a technique, and the Ando 2 stunning speed with which the character of Japanese life itself has been transformed” (New Japanese Photography 1974). The velocity at which Japan developed following World War II intrigued Szarkowski and he wished to share the way in which Japanese photographers documented this economic, political, and social marvel. Szarkowski’s interest in Japanese photography began in 1965 after receiving a letter from Yasuhiro Ishimoto, a photographer who studied at the Institute of Design in Chicago and whose work was exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art’s Diagenese with a Camera V exhibition (Kai 2013). During his two-week research visit to Japan in May 1971, he was interviewed by Camera Mainichi, where Yamagishi was working as an editor (Kai 2013). Found in his correspondence with the magazine following the trip, Szarkowski expresses his intention for Tomatsu as the lead figure in the exhibition. Art historian Yoshiaki Kai translates Yamagishi’s Japanese written text in the show’s catalog to find his intention with the show does not rest upon proving a Japanese identity, rather, “it was a part of habitual work that seeks out the common significance of today’s photography, based on contemporary concerns and unrestricted ideas” (Kai 2013). The English text translation in the introduction is not accurate and misleads readers into understanding the works presented. In alignment with Szarkowski’s other shows, New Japanese Photography is not centered around a thematic framework and includes works from different series from each artist (Kai 2013). Since Japanese photography was typically shown in prints, Szarkowski framed each photograph individually and tilted the frames to mimic a bookshelf (Kai 2013). While the intent of the display has been made clear to the public through documents left behind, the choice of each photograph has not. However, the letters from Szarkowski note Shomei Tomatsu, a photographer Yamagashi featured in Camera Mainichi, was always intended to be the pivotal figure of the exhibition (Kai 2013). The press release reveals the intention to give focus to Daido Ando 3 Moriyama for his occultist lens and Eikoh Hosoe’s striking images surrounding sex (“New Japanese Photography” 1974). The absence of a forthright theme gives agency to the Japanese photographers and their images to stand alone instead of speak in turn. Shomei Tomatsu is the show’s main focus as he exposes a Japanese documentary perspective of World War II to an international audience. Born in 1930, Tomatsu is one of the youngest photographers featured in the show yet has published four photography books: 11:02 Nagasaki (1966), Nippon (1967), Après-Guerre (1971), and I Am a King (1972) (“New Japanese Photography” 1974). Szarkowski found Tomatsu’s work as, “‘not the rejection of traditional journalism but the
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