HUMAN SYMPHONY: The Photo Exhibition by Tanuma Takeyoshi

Jan. 17—Feb. 22, 2004

• Jan. 17—Feb. 22, 2004
• Closed Monday(if Monday is a national holiday or a substitute holiday, it is the next day)
• Admission：Adults ￥700／College Students ￥600／High School and Junior High School Students,Over 65 ￥500

Tanuma Takeyoshi was born in 1929 to a family that operated a photo studio in the traditional Shitamachi working class area of Tokyo. After graduating from the Tokyo Professional School of Photography (now Tokyo Polytechnic University), he leaped straight into the hands-on world of photojournalism, finding employment with Sun News Photos. There he met Kimura Ihee and served as his assistant. In 1951, he began working as a part-time Photographer for the magazine Geijutsu Shincho and steadily building his standing as a photographer. His subsequent achievements in the world of photojournalism, including his work as a Time-Life stringer, are nothing short of dazzing.
An encounter with children at the Bois de Boulogne in the outskirts of Paris added a new dimension to his career. Moved by those children’s infinite potential and radiant spirit, he made photographing children his life’s work. Tanuma, in focusing tightly on his chosen role as a photographer of children, sought to discover an integral world that transcends differences of culture, religion, or wealth. That artistic intention has given the very human images he captures in his photographs a richness and breadth that challenges the limits of conventional interpretation.
This exhibition covers a half century of Tanuma’s work―work in which he continues to be vigorously engaged―created in the course of his journeys as a photojournalist to over 120 nations. Starting with his early Portraits of Writers and Artists series, we present a selection of 200 of Tanuma’s photographs, including images from Postwar Children (from the museum’s collection) and from his most recent collections, Hands and Voices and Children of the World Today, for which he has traveled around the globe. The exhibition thus provides a panoramic view of Tanuma’s world.