Masterpieces of Japanese Pictorial Photography

Mar. 8—May. 8, 2011

• Mar. 8—May. 8, 2011
• Closed Monday(if Monday is a national holiday or a substitute holiday, it is the next day)
• Admission：Adults ￥800／College Students ￥700／High School and Junior High School Students, Over 65 ￥600

Takayama Masataka "Woman with an Instrument" 1924



Nojima Yasuzo "Woman Combing Her Hair" 1914 The National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto
Kurokawa Suizan "Title Unknown" c.1906


The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography is delighted to welcome you to Masterpieces of Japanese Pictorial Photography, a special exhibition for our 2010-2011 fiscal year.

Can photography be art? And, if so, how? These questions have engaged photographers since the invention of the photographic method. One answer, the approach known as Pictorialism, emerged in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Its practitioners tried to make photographs works of art by imitating painting. In Japan, too, amateur photographers, their numbers growing with innovations in photographic technology, were assimilating trends from the West and exploring possible paradigms for photography as an art form. Adopting as models both traditional Japanese and the newly introduced Western-style painting, they forged a Pictorialism unique to photography in Japan. In the Taisho period (1912-1926), Pictorialist works making skillful use of the pigment printing process and a soft-focus style were produced in large numbers. These photographs, which required a high level of craftsman-like hand processing of prints, became almost synonymous with within Pictorialist art photography. The subsequent Modernist movement in photography, with its quest for photographic purity, rejected art photography created in this way, but Pictorialism nonetheless lived on, in altered form, during the reign of Showa Modernism.

This exhibition brings together 120 masterpieces, the quintessence of art photography in Japan, and a group of valuable related materials, which we hope will enable visitors to enjoy Pictorialism to the full.

Events

floor lectures

Mar. 18 (Fri) 16:00～
Apr. 1 (Fri) 16:00～
Apr. 15 (Fri) 16:00～
May. 6 (Fri) 16:00～