Ueda Shoji
Untitled

ArtistJapanese, 1913–2000
CultureJapanese
Titles
  • Untitled
  • from the series Tottori Sand Dunes
Date1950
PlaceJapan
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 9 1/8 × 9 in. (23.1 × 22.9 cm)
Sheet: 11 9/16 × 10 3/4 in. (29.4 × 27.3 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by Morris Weiner, The Manfred Heiting Collection
Object number2002.2489
Not on view

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Department
Photography
Object Type
DescriptionShoji Ueda worked outside the mainstream photography movements of postwar Japan, developing a style of staged photography that balanced a distinctive mix of lyricism and humor with compositional strength. After studying photography in Tokyo, he returned to the sparsely developed, rugged coast of his native Tottori Prefecture, where he spent the rest of his career expressing a regional sensibility removed from the dominant trend of documentary photography. In a series of photographs taken in the extensive Tottori sand dunes, Ueda scattered his family members (posing as models) across the stark backdrop in haphazard groupings that verge on the surreal. The sense of dreamlike ambiguity is heightened by an uneven horizon, as the dunes roll beneath a cloud-filled sky.
Provenance[Manfred Heiting, Malibu, California]; purchased by MFAH, 2002.
Exhibition HistoryExhibited in "Japanese Photography in the Manfred Heiting Collection" at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, March 11- July 13, 2003.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
There is an inscription in pencil, verso of sheet, lower right, in Japanese.

verso lower right a stamp in red-artist's chop ?

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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Untitled
Ueda Shoji
1986
Chromogenic print
2002.2487
Portrait on a Sand Dune
Ueda Shoji
1950
Gelatin silver print
94.753
Untitled
Ueda Shoji
1950
Gelatin silver print
2002.2495
Untitled
Ueda Shoji
1986
Chromogenic print
2002.2485
Untitled
Ueda Shoji
1986
Chromogenic print
2002.2491
Untitled
Ueda Shoji
1983
Chromogenic print
2002.2484
Untitled
Ueda Shoji
1950
Gelatin silver print
2002.2494
Untitled
Ueda Shoji
1950
Gelatin silver print
94.754
Landscape with still life
Ueda Shoji
c. 1950
Gelatin silver print with applied color
98.564
Nude Torso
Ueda Shoji
1950
Gelatin silver print
2002.2493
Landscape (Shiroi michi)
Ueda Shoji
c. 1950
Gelatin silver print
99.15
cropped recto of sheet
Ueda Shoji
1986
Chromogenic print
2002.2486