MORE THAN ONE WORLD New Japanese Photography 50 Years On | VV.AA. | Aka Aka 2025
This book is brand new!
"Nearly every major cultural development has been driven by a sustained, almost obsessive passion. Japanese photography today enjoys worldwide recognition not only thanks to the efforts of people like John Szarkowski, Shoji Yamagishi, Sandra Phillips, and Ryuichi Kaneko, but also because of the generations before and after them who have preserved and passed on the necessary spark.
I believe that no matter how much we may strive for objectivity, our perspectives will always be distorted by our biases. But these biases can also be a force for change. Cultural narratives, contexts, and viewpoints are constantly evolving as each generation reexamines the choices and preferences of those who came before. This publication commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the 1974 exhibition New Japanese Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was the first to introduce the work of Japanese photographers to an international audience and is now regarded as a major turning point in the critical reception and study of Japanese photography in the West.
The fifteen texts in this book are based on the exhibitions and symposia that formed the core program of T3 PHOTO FESTIVAL TOKYO 2024. Organized into four chapters, they examine the historical significance of the 1974 exhibition, explore perspectives it did not consider, extend the discussion to broader, global contexts, and finally venture a glimpse into the future.
In 1974, curator John Szarkowski concluded his introduction to the New Japanese Photography catalog by expressing the hope that photographers would "continue to explore the exhilarating possibility that in the arts at least there is after all more than one world." It is my hope that this book will not only serve as a valuable resource for those interested in the current state of Japanese photography, but also spark fresh conversations and ideas and lead us to new worlds not yet explored." - From the text "Passing On the Spark" by Ihiro Hayami
The extensive critical apparatus is both in Japanese and English.