The central theme for the T3 Photo Festival Tokyo 2024, “New Japanese Photography: 50 Years On” was conceived in relation to the exhibition New Japanese Photography held at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 1974, co-curated by John Szarkowski and Shoji Yamagishi. Regarded as “the first attempt to present an extensive survey of contemporary Japanese photography outside Japan,” this exhibition has had a major and long-lasting impact on the study and understanding of Japanese photography overseas. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of this exhibition, I curated two projects for T3 that consider the legacy of this landmark exhibition.

A Female Perspective

Despite the scope of New Japanese Photography—it included 187 photographs by no less than 15 photographers—no female photographers were presented in the show, reflecting the limited access women had to the photography world at the time in Japan. A Female Perspective includes the work of six female photographers who were active in the postwar period: Hisae Imai (1931–2009), Tamiko Nishimura (b. 1948), Toshiko Okanoue (b. 1928), Toyoko Tokiwa (1930–2019), Hitomi Watanabe (1939), and Eiko Yamazawa (1899–1995). A showcase of the extraordinary diversity of photographic approaches developed by women in Japan that presents a different face of the “new Japanese photography” of the time.

The Wall vs the Page

Despite the importance of printed publications in Japanese photography of the postwar years, almost no books or other printed materials appeared in the MoMA exhibition. This reading room shifts the focus to the printed publications that were made of the series presented in New York. Rather than an exhibition, The Wall vs. the Page highlights the experience of the book, inviting the viewer to consider the differences in the way we encounter photographs in these two contexts.

You can watch an overview video of the full festival programme below:

T3 Photo Festival Tokyo 2024

Tokyo, October 2024