“Yutaka Takanashi: Field Notes of Light”, held at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, recently closed. It was the first major exhibition of the photographer’s work, canvassing the scope of his career, beginning with his early student works at the Kuwasawa Design School c. 1960, where he studied under the influential Kiyoji Ohtsuji.

Even then, the city was his principal subject and has remained so throughout his career. In light of this, it becomes clear how his work that appeared in Provoke — with its unsteady framing and pulled-back-views-as-landscapes — represents his awe in the camera’s ability to see the world differently. The exhibition of the Provoke-era work included a selected dozen or so prints, mounted at equivalent height along the wall. Instead of the near-repeats and echoing found in his book Toward the City, which we featured in our project, Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s & 70s, the selection of images was sparse and highly varied. It gave the exuberance in the work an anxious quality, the eye never resting on any particular form or the photographer being fickle with his themes. Or, that’s how it seemed in looking at the photographs as they were shown in this exhibition.

While there is merit, of course, to showing Takanashi’s work in a retrospective manner, I wonder if his work lends itself to an exhibition format in the first place? There is an imposed stasis that the curators tried admirably to traverse. I felt the same way about last year’s Daido Moriyama retrospective exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. The framed images and the over-sized prints communicated more a vision of the museum than of the photographer.

I wonder what an exhibition of Moriyama’s work would be like if the photographer curated the show himself? The same for Takanashi. But, then, I suppose I shouldn’t hold my breath for any such show. There’s a distinct impression that these fellows have left the exhibition-making to the curators for a reason.

Posted by: Ivan

This post is tagged: Daido Moriyama, Japanese photobooks, Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s & 70s, Japanese photography, Yutaka Takanashi