There's no way you can really reduce the photographic history of a place to just a few artists, let alone two. But the curators at L.A.'s J. Paul Getty Museum are trying — in the forthcoming exhibition, Japan's Modern Divide.
By focusing on two artists, the show will examine how, as Japan faced westernization, photography diverged in two general directions: Hiroshi Hamaya's documentary style centered on Japan's traditional culture, while Kansuke Yamamoto's avant-garde art more closely aligned with French surrealism.
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The Village up on a Cay, Aomori Prefecture, 1955 (Hiroshi Hamaya / Courtesy of the Getty Museum)
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Blind Musicians, Niigata Prefecture, 1956 (Hiroshi Hamaya / Courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum)
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Man in a Traditional Minobashi Raincoat, Niigata Prefecture, 1956 (Hiroshi Hamaya / The J. Paul Getty Museum)
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Yaichi Aizu, Poet, Calligrapher, and Japanese Art Critic, 1947 (Hiroshi Hamaya / Courtesy of The J. Paul Getty Museum)
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The United States-Japan Security Treaty Protest, Tokyo, May 20, 1960 (Hiroshi Hamaya / Courtesy of the Getty Museum)
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The United States-Japan Security Treaty Protest, Tokyo, June 15, 1960 (Hiroshi Hamaya / Courtesy of the Getty Museum)
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The United States-Japan Security Treaty Protest, Tokyo, June 19, 1960 (Hiroshi Hamaya / Courtesy of the Getty Museum)
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Eruption at Mount Tokachi, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan, 1962 (Hiroshi Hamaya / Courtesy of the Getty Museum)
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Calendar Days of Asa Hamaya, circa 1948-49 (Hiroshi Hamaya / Courtesy of the Getty Museum)
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Children Singing in a Snow Cave, Niigata Prefecture, 1956 (Hiroshi Hamaya / Courtesy of the Getty Museum)
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Sai no Kami (Fire Festival, New Year's Ritual), 1940-46 (Hiroshi Hamaya / Courtesy of the Getty Museum)
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Peaks of Takachiho Volcano, Kagoshima and Miyazaki Prefectures, Japan, 1964 (Hiroshi Hamaya / Courtesy of the Getty Museum)
The two men didn't necessarily know each other, but there were some parallels between them: Only a year apart in age (Yamamoto was born first, in 1914), they both learned to photograph in high school. Both grew up in cities; Hamaya was the son of a detective in Tokyo, and Yamamoto's family "had basically brought photography to Nagoya," says Amanda Maddox, co-curator of the show with Judith Keller.
And both photographers were aware of what was happening in the West. Yet Yamamoto, who was independently wealthy, never really left Nagoya. And, says Maddox, "it's fair to say that [he] is still relatively unknown within Japan."
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My Thin-Aired Room, 1956 (Kansuke Yamamoto / Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography)
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Reminiscence, 1953 (Kansuke Yamamoto / Anne and David Ruderman)
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Stapled Flesh, 1949 (Kansuke Yamamoto / The Collection of Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck)
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The Man Who Went Too Far, 1956 (Kansuke Yamamoto / Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography)
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A Chronicle of Drifting, 1949 (Kansuke Yamamoto / Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography)
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Butterfly, 1970 (Kansuke Yamamoto / Courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum)
Hamaya, on the other hand, "was very well-known in Japan by the '50s," says Keller. He was one of the first to do aerial photography in the country. Early on, he received an assignment on Japan's snowy, rural west coast and "decided that he wanted to photograph in rural Japan and represent ... how they were being left behind by the westernization of the country," Keller says.
A few photos in a blog post about an exhibit of a few photos by two men barely scratch the surface of Japanese photography. But before this show, Keller says, "so little was known in English about either one of these photographers." And Keller and Maddox suggest that there's more to come.
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