Mochizuki Masao
Queen Elizabeth in Tokyo, May 7, 1975

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Images(2)

Artist Mochizuki MasaoJapanese, born 1939

CultureJapanese

Titles

Queen Elizabeth in Tokyo, May 7, 1975

Date1975, printed c. 1998

Place depictedTokyo, Japan

MediumGelatin silver prints

DimensionsOverall: 19 5/8 × 27 in. (49.8 × 68.6 cm)
Mount: 22 × 32 in. (55.9 × 81.3 cm)
Frame (outer) (ANW EXHIBITION FRAME): 30 7/8 × 36 7/8 × 1 3/4 in. (78.4 × 93.7 × 4.4 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund

Object number2014.714

Non exposé

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionIn Television, Masao Mochizuki made a drastic shift to an experimental practice that employed shared cultural media in an attempt to avoid subjectivity, in response to the fast-growing television culture. Mochizuki overlaid a grid of thirty-five squares, five wide by seven high, on the focusing screen of his camera. He then set up his family’s fifteen-inch television set in the darkroom, placing his camera at a distance from the TV so that the luminescent screen fit fully into one of the thirty-five squares of his grid. After selecting a channel, he released the shutter to capture a still from the television programming and then moved the camera slightly so that the screen aligned with the next cell, repeating the process until the entire film plate was exposed. Mochizuki combined a number of these multiple-exposure plates to create works of great visual complexity. Queen Elizabeth in Tokyo, for example, consists of six plates for a total of 210 individual frames taken from the television coverage of the queen’s 1975 visit to Tokyo. Commercials are included to convey a disordered experience of watching history in the making. For the works in this series, Mochizuki selected programs of historical importance as well as of popular interest, such as the fall of Saigon to the Viet Cong, derby races, and the iconic film Seven Samurai. Mochizuki selected the subjects yet was unable to control the result. The viewer absorbs the version of history transmitted from the screen, but processes the stream of information individually.
Provenance[Osiris Co., Ltd., Tokyo]; 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 on sheet recto in pen: AP 2

Inscribed in graphite on verso mount: 2001.4.10 [signature]

Signed in ink lower right below image: Masao Mochizuki

Signed in graphite on verso mount center: [Japanese, vertically] / Mochizuki / Masao

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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