Salon #10 – From VIVO to Provoke and Beyond

12 April 2016: 10×10 salon with Matthew Witkovsky, Sayaka Takahashi, Takashi Arai and Munemasa Takahashi.

The topic was postwar Japanese photobooks from the late 1950s until the present. Our presenters included Matthew S. Witkovsky, Sandor Chair of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago and Sayaka Takahashi, director of PGI Gallery in Tokyo. Also present were photographers Takashi Arai and Munemasa Takahashi.

Matthew Witkovsky has been active in art museums and galleries since the 1980s. He has curated more than 20 exhibitions, authored ten books and dozens of articles for journals. As Chair of the Photography Department at the Art Institute of Chicago, Matthew has contributed to the museum’s forthcoming László Moholy-Nagy retrospective (October 2016). He is also a co-curator of Provoke: Photography in Japan between Protest and Performance, 1960-1975, a traveling exhibition currently on view at the Albertina Museum in Vienna and scheduled for a 2017 opening at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Matthew spoke on the development and background of the Provoke exhibition. In particular, he focused on research related to the following Provoke and protest books: Record of Anger and Sadness (1960) by Hiroshi Hamaya, I Am a King (1972) by Shomei Tomatsu, Tokyoites (1983) by Yutaka Takanashi, “Accident” series from Asahi Camera (1969) and Bye-Bye Photography (1972) by Daido Moriyama, and For a Language to Come (1970) by Takuma Nakahira.

Sayaka Takahashi began working in the field of photography at the PGI Gallery and the Higashikawa International Photo Festival in 1998. As PGI Gallery Director, she has worked closely with many of the most celebrated postwar photographers – in particular Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Ikko Narahara and Kikuji Kawada, the latter two photographers co-founders of the highly influential VIVO collective from 1959–1961. In addition, she is responsible for introducing contemporary Japanese photographers to international audiences.

Sayaka presented two critically important, but lesser known books by VIVO photographers: Japanesque (1970) by Ikko Narahara and The Globe Theatre (1998) by Kikuji Kawada. Also present at the salon were PGI Gallery photographers Takashi Arai (2016 winner of the 41st Kimura Ihei Award for his book Monuments) and Munemasa Takahashi (organizer of the Lost and Found project and author of Laying Stones), who joined Sayaka in a discussion about their recent books. Works by Kawada, Arai and Takahashi are currently on view in Japan Society’s In the Wake exhibition.