Seiichi Furuya

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Seiichi Furuya (古屋 誠 一 Furuya Seiichi; * 1950 in Izu, Shizuoka Prefecture ) is a Japanese photographer . He lives in Graz and is a co-founder of the Camera Austria association .

Life

Furuya studied architecture and then photography for two years at Tokyo College of Photography at Tokyo Polytechnic University . In 1973 he dropped out of college and left Japan to travel. As Arthur Ollman writes in his book The Model Wife , he became an “exile who bears his alienation like an obligation”. Since 1975 his work has been presented in numerous exhibitions, especially in Austria, Switzerland, Germany and Japan. In Austria, where he has lived since 1975, he met his future wife Christine Gössler (* 1953), who was the main subject of his photographic work until her suicide in 1985. The couple had a son. From 1984 to 1987 the family lived first in Dresden then in East Berlin, where Furuya worked as a translator.

The last pictures he took of his wife suffering from schizophrenia show her shoes, which she neatly placed next to the window she jumped out of, and her body nine floors below. Many of his works have appeared in the context of book projects (e.g. five volumes of Mémoires ); they are the expression of a “memory work that tells of the existential experience of love, loss and pain without ever being sentimental. The dimension of one's own fate is always embedded in the political and social reality of its time ”, so that of the GDR before the fall of the Wall.

Photo volumes (selection)

  • Seiichi Furuya: Why Dresden: Photographs 1984/85 & 2015. Text by Manfred Wiemer, Spector Books, 2017 (English).
  • Seiichi Furuya: Memoires: 1984-1987. Text by Einar Schleef . English, German and Japanese editions. Nohara, 2010.
  • Seiichi Furuya: State Border: 1981-1983. Spector Books, 2014.
  • Seiichi Furuya: Mémoires 1983. Edition Fotohof, 2006. (German / Japanese with English booklet)
  • Seiichi Furuya: Alive. Text by Monika Faber. Scalo Verlag, 2004 (English).
  • Seiichi Furuya: Portrait: Christine Furuya-Gössler, 1978-1985. Text by Monika Faber. English and German edition. Edition Fotohof, 2000.
  • Seiichi Furuya: Christine Furuya-Gössler Mémoires, 1978-1985. Korinsha Press, 1997 (Japanese / English / German)
  • Seiichi Furuya: Mémoires 1995. Texts by Urs Stahel and Toshiharu Ito, Scalo Verlag, 1995
  • Seiichi Furuya: Mémoires. Texts by Monika Faber, Werner Fenz, Christine Frisinghelli and Wilfried Skreiner, Edition Camera Austria, 1989 (German / English)

Awards (selection)

  • 2019 Austrian State Prize for Artistic Photography
  • 2007 Society of Photography Award, Tokyo
  • 2002 Award of the State Secretary for Art and Media, Vienna
  • 2002 Ina Nobuo Prize, Tokyo
  • 2000 Prize of the Rupertinum Salzburg
  • 1996 State grant for artistic photography, Austria
  • 1993 Camera Austria Prize for Contemporary Photography, Graz
  • 1990 Prize of the Society for Photography, Tokyo
  • 1989 European Kodak Book Prize for Mémoires , Germany

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers (『日本 写真 家事 典』 | Nihon shashinka jiten ). Kyoto: Tankōsha 2000.
  2. ↑ Arthur Ollman: The Model Wife. A Bullfinch Press Book / Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1999, p. 178
  3. ↑ Seiichi Furuya: Had If Why. Exhibition at the Museum for Photography Braunschweig 2012
personal data
SURNAME Furuya, Seiichi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese photographer
DATE OF BIRTH 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Izu, Shizuoka Prefecture