CMA Exhibition Feature : Highlights of the Exhibition

Special Exhibitions

History of Japanese Photography

The History of Japanese Photography > Highlights of the Exhibition



Uchida Kuichi (1844-75) Portrait of Emperor (Meiji), 1872 Albumen photograph Dawn Ishimaru Frazier, Los Angeles

Highlights of the Exhibition

Featured will be 19th-century images depicting the last days of feudal Japan, including portraits of samurai and the Meiji emperor, and photographic scrolls with panoramas of major Japanese cities and battlefields from the Russo-Japanese War. Twentieth-century images include rural landscapes, urban scenes and still lifes as well as post-World War II photographs that reflect an era of internationalization and challenge the boundaries of visual expression.

The first photograph taken in Japan was the work of Eliphalet Brown, Jr. A painter and photographer, Brown accompanied U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry in 1854 on his second mission to negotiate the opening of trade between Japan and the West. The introduction of photography to Japan parallels the opening of Japan to Western influence after centuries of isolation. The history of Japanese photography reflects both Japan's embrace of and resistance to the West. This exhibition traces the concerns and aesthetic evolution of Japanese photographers over the last 150 years, and how they parallel or diverge from the Western photographic tradition. It is a rich history with stunning images that invites further research.



Yanagi Miwa (b. 1967) Elevator Girl House 1F (detail), 1997 Diptych, chromogenic photographs, each faced-in to plexiglass, mounted on wood panel National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto

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