Untitled

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Artist Nakahira Takuma(Japanese, 1938–2015)Japanese, 1938–2015

CultureJapanese

Titles

Untitled

Date1968–1970, printed 2014

Place depictedJapan

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 18 7/8 × 12 5/8 in. (48 × 32.1 cm)
Sheet: 19 7/8 × 16 in. (50.5 × 40.6 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by The Francis L. Lederer Foundation, courtesy of Sharon Lederer

Object number2014.667

Non exposé

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionA prolific writer and critic, Takuma Nakahira focused his practice on photography’s relationship with language. He began working in photography with a camera given to him by the senior photographer Shōmei Tōmatsu. In 1968 he worked with the poet Takahiko Okada and the photographers Yutaka Takanashi, Kōji Taki, and subsequently Daidō Moriyama to produce the short-lived but extremely influential photography journal Provoke. Nakahira continued his radical mode of media critique between 1970 and 1974 to include photography, film, journalism, television, tourism, and art, examining the social foundations of visual media in everyday urban experience. In 1970 Nakahira published his landmark book For a Language to Come, which included his iconic are-bure-boke (grainy, blurry, and out-of-focus) photographs of disquieting scenes of everyday urban life. These images, often tilted and shot toward a light source, capture fragments of Nakahira’s experiences in a landscape suspended between construction and destruction, and marked by the grotesque expansion and remaking of postwar Japan.
ProvenanceThe artist, through Osiris Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, 2014; purchased by MFAH, 2014.
Exhibition History“For A New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968-1979 Japan,” The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, March 8–July 12, 2015.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Inscribed in graphite on verso lower right: E-035 / 1/10

Stamped on verso lower right in black ink: (Japanese characters) Takuma Nakahira / Print certified by Osiris

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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