Shōmei Tōmatsu

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Shōmei Tōmatsu ( Japanese 東 松 照明 , Tōmatsu Shōmei ; born January 16, 1930 in Nagoya ; † December 14, 2012 in Naha , Okinawa Prefecture , Japan ) was a Japanese photographer who in the second half of the 20th century was a thematically diverse and stylistically influential work.

life and work

Initially self-taught, Shōmei Tōmatsu worked for the photographic magazine Iwanami Shashin Bunko from 1954–1956 and co-founded the agency VIVO in 1959 (together with Eikō Hosoe , Kikuji Kawada , Ikkō Narahara and others). He became famous for photographs that he was prompted to take by the Japanese Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs and that were published in the volumes Hiroshima Nagasaki Document (1961, together with Ken Domon ) and 11:02 Nagasaki (1966). In these pictures Tomatsu evoked the horror of the atomic bomb being dropped over the city of Nagasaki through the traces left on people, objects and structures. These works apply alongside Kikuji Kawada's Chizu. The Map (1965) as the most important photographic examination of the subject. Since then, Shōmei Tōmatsu has been considered the most important Japanese photographer of his generation in terms of both thematic and style, who significantly influenced subsequent photographers in his country, such as Daido Moriyama and Takuma Nakahira , who were to become representatives of a new photo avant-garde.

Other main themes of his works are the ambivalent changes in Japan under the influence of the US occupation after the Second World War , especially in the extensive series Chewing Gum and Chocolate from 1958–1980, and, antithetical to this, traditional Japanese culture the prefecture of Okinawa away from the US military bases, to which he dedicated the volume Taiyo no empitsu ( The Pencil of the Sun ) published in 1975 . Tomatsu described both experiences as "culture shock".

The aesthetics of his still exclusively black and white early work, which went beyond the conventions of documentary photography , is characterized by the reduction to a few, often seemingly insignificant, but meaningful elements due to the expressiveness of the representation. An example of this is a famous picture from the Nagasaki project in which a glass bottle melted under the heat of the atomic bomb explosion evokes associations with a mutilated carcass.

As a result, his work oscillates between a dynamic, disorienting image composition, which culminated in the work on the student unrest and nightlife in Tokyo 's Shinjuku district from around 1969 , and meditative silence, such as in the later work Plastics , one in the years 1987–1989 taken on Kujūkuri Beach , a series of partly surreal images of floating debris washed ashore. His series Intertidal Zone , which he began in the 1960s (expanded in the 1990s under the title Interface ), which is dedicated to the habitat of the littoral on the rocky coasts of Japan, appears almost abstract .

Publications (selection)

  • Hiroshima-Nagasaki Document . Japan Council Against A- and H-Bombs, Tokyo 1961 (with Ken Domon)
  • "11-ji 02-fun" Nagasaki ( 11:02 Nagasaki ). Shashin Dojinsha, Tokyo 1966
  • Nippon ( Japan ). Shaken, Tokyo 1967
  • Okinawa, Okinawa, Okinawa . Shaken, Tokyo 1969
  • Oh! Shinjuku . Shaken, Tokyo 1969
  • I am a King . Shashin Hyoronsha, Tokyo 1972
  • Taiyō no empitsu ( The Pencil of the Sun. Okinawa & SE Asia ). Mainichi Shimbun- sha, Tokyo 1975
  • Sharks ( Ruinous Garden ). Parco, Tokyo 1987
  • Sakura, sakura, sakura ( Cherry, Cherry, Cherry ). Brain Center, Osaka 1990
  • Interface . National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo 1996
  • Visions of Japan: Tomatsu Shomei . Korinsha Press, Kyoto 1998 (contains the Plastics series )

literature

  • Shomei Tomatsu. Japan 1952-1981 . Edition Camera Austria, Graz 1984, ISBN 3-900508-04-6 .
  • Traces - 50 Years of Tomatsu's Works . Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo 1999.
  • Ian Jeffrey: Shomei Tomatsu . Phaidon, Berlin 2001, ISBN 0-7148-9188-6 (Phaidon 55s series).
  • Shomei Tomatsu. Skin of the Nation . San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco 2004, ISBN 0-300-10604-1 .
  • Roland Angst: Shomei Tomatsu. Photographs 1951 to 2000 , en / ja. Only Photography Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-9812537-7-1 .
  • John Junkerman, Leo Rubinfien (Eds.): Chewing Gum and Chocolate. Photographs by Shomei Tomatsu . Kehrer, Heidelberg 2014, ISBN 978-3-86828-498-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Shomei Tomatsu obituary. Obituary at the Guardian , Jan. 14, 2013.
  2. ↑ See also: Martin Parr, Gerry Badger: The Photobook: A History Vol. 1 . Phaidon Press, London 2004, ISBN 0-7148-4285-0 , pp. 274-277.
  3. ↑ Shomei Tomatsu: Towards the Sea of ​​Chaos . In: Traces - 50 Years of Tomatsu's Works . Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo 1999, pp. 186-187.
personal data
SURNAME Tōmatsu, Shōmei
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 東 松 照明 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese photographer
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Nagoya
DATE OF DEATH December 14, 2012
Place of death Naha , Okinawa Prefecture , Japan