TOKYO MANDALA

The World of Shomei Tomatsu

Oct. 27—Dec. 16, 2007

• Oct. 27—Dec. 16, 2007
• 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

Shomei Tomatsu, the preeminent Japanese postwar photographer, moved to Tokyo after graduating from Aichi University in 1954. He worked the Iwanami publishing house on its Iwanami Shashin Bunko series of photography books before beginning his career as a freelance photographer in 1956. In the decades since then, he has repeatedly changed his base from Nagoya to Tokyo to Okinawa to Chiba, and most recently to Nagasaki, while continuing to produce the significant, indeed groundbreaking work that has earned him an unshakable reputation throughout the world.
Tokyo Mandala is the final exhibition in a series that began with Nagasaki Mandala at the Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum (2000) and was followed by the Okinawa Mandala exhibition at the Urasoe Art Museum in Okinawa (2002), Kyo Mandala at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (2003), and Aichi Mandala at the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art (2006). In his Mandala series, Tomatsu, taking the area in which he was shooting as his guiding concept, dissected his work’s thematic and historical qualities and recomposed a selection from it for each exhibition. Tokyo Mandala includes work from the greater Kanto area, centering on Tokyo but including China and Kanagawa prefectures, for example, as well. It also includes photographs Tomatsu produced throughout the world during the decades when he was based in Tokyo. Restructured as Tokyo Mandala, these images comprise a body of work that defines Tomatsu’s photographic universe.
The 307 photographs in this exhibition include some of Tomatsu’s most famous work as well as unpublished images selected by going back through his negatives once again. The prints themselves include some from the museum collection as well as newly produced inkjet prints. As a whole, they present a clearly defined and comprehensive view of how Shomei Tomatsu, photographer, sees the world, from his early work through the present.