The New Middle Class and Amateur Art Photography in Taisho Period Japan

Wednesday 9 July 2008
6 - 7pm
Centenary Auditorium

Anne Wilkes Tucker, Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

In the early 20th century, as Japan enjoyed a time of economic prosperity following the Russian-Japanese War, serious amateur photographic societies were formed that embraced the Pictorialist style of photography popular in the West, but with particular Japanese modifications. During the Taisho period (1912-1926), landscapes were the dominant subject but still lifes and portraits were also popular in magazines and exhibitions. As factories and smoke became an increasing part of the urban landscape, weekend trips to the countryside were part of the impetuous to make beautiful photographs of landscapes untouched by manmade structures, and often with only a sole individual included. The appeal of land as a subject was accentuated by the capacity to control and manipulate shades of light and dark through photographic processes, and by the possibility of imposing a personal response on the subject through this manipulation. Still life images also allowed artists the freedom of control, and of responding to an ancient artistic genre using a modern process. Late in the Taisho period, the photographer / businessman Fukuhara Shinzo lead a movement toward less manipulated images, which nevertheless continued to blend “light with its harmony”.

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Taisho chic: Japanese modernity, nostalgia and deco
22 May – 3 August 2008