Japanese photography

Abstract

Abstarct Ambition is the prevailing motif of The History of Japanese Photography. This exhibition catalogue claims to be ‘the first nuanced, thorough history of Japanese photography in a Western language’, introducing not only a broad audience of ‘Westerners to a stunning national tradition’ but also promoting ‘future research and cross cultural comparisons’. To this end, most of Japan's best curators and commentators were consulted, knowledgeable North Americans and Europeans were queried, and generous sums, particularly from the Japan Foundation, were raised by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The exhibition's more than two hundred photographs, handsomely reproduced by Yale University Press, are supplemented by further examples in the catalogue, and seven essays, by top Japanese critics — Kinoshita Naoyuki, Kaneko Ryiiichi (who contributes two), Takeba Joe, and Iizawa Kotaro — and American curators Dana Friis-Hansen and Anne Wilkes Tucker, the lead curator. The extraordinary leg-work and goodwill that went into this effort is impressive, and yet the project's goal, this ‘nuanced, thorough history’, eludes it. No guiding intelligence has clarified the key concept of ‘Japanese photography’, provided a coherent narrative of its development, engaged previous exhibitions or scholarship, or explained the omission of several topics (erotic images, for instance, or camera manufacture) that are of central importance in Japan.