Kitai Kazuo
Students at Meeting

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Images(3)

Artist Kitai KazuoJapanese, born 1944

CultureJapanese

Titles

Students at Meeting
from Barricade

Date1968

PlaceJapan

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 14 7/8 × 10 in. (37.8 × 25.4 cm)
Sheet: 16 3/4 × 12 in. (42.5 × 30.5 cm)
Frame (ANW EXHIBITION FRAME): 24 5/8 × 18 5/8 × 1 15/16 in. (62.5 × 47.3 × 4.9 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the Mary Kathryn Lynch Charitable Lead Trust Fund

Object number2013.254

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionKazuo Kitai’s best-known series, Barricade, grew out of a study of dramatic street protests that he began in 1964 as a student at Nihon University’s College of Art. To capture the frenetic energy of revolution, Kitai eschewed established norms that dictated that photographs should be well composed, conceptually rigorous, and pristinely printed. Instead, using an expired film, he set out to take bad (out-of-focus) photographs of acts of rebellion that were taking place around him as the Zengakuren (All-Japan Federation of Students’ Self-Governing Associations) protested the proposed visit of a U.S. atomic submarine to the Yokosuka naval base. He self-published the blurry action shots of street protests in 1965 as the large-format booklet Resistance, and continued to shoot student protests for the Zengakuren newspaper the following year. The year 1968 marked a turning point in the student protest movement as its constituency and objectives broadened with the demand for the democratization of education. Barricades were built to keep out the police, and protesters lived in a building of Nihon University for four months. Kitai spent the entire period behind the barricades capturing the conflict between protesters and authorities, as well as the quotidian realities of bathing, eating, and collectively sharing the space.
ProvenanceThe artist, Chiba, Japan; [Colin Mahar, Harper's Books, Inc. ABAA/ILAB, East Hampton, New York, 2012]; purchased by MFAH, 2013.
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 below the image in ink: 1968 ... [illegible marks]
Inscribed in red pencil on verso lower left: 14 / F (?)
Inscribed in graphite on verso upper left: B-V-4
Inscribed in graphite on verso lower right: [Japanese characters] 1968 [twice]

Signed? on verso in graphite, lower right in Japanese characters

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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