About Japanese photographer, Takuma NAKAHIRA (中平 卓馬, 1938-2015)
Born
in Tokyo, Takuma NAKAHIRA attended the Tokyo University of Foreign
Studies, from which he graduated in 1963. He began working as an editor
at the art magazine 'Contemporary view' (Gendai no me), during which
time he published his work under the pseudonym of Akira Yuzuki (柚木明).
Two years later, he left the magazine in order to help organize the
major 1968 exhibition 'One Hundred Years of Photography. The History of
Japanese Photographic Expression' at the invitation of Shōmei TOMATSU.
In 1968, he and photo critic Koji Taki teamed up with Yutaka TAKANASHI,
and critic Takahiko Okada, to found the magazine 'Provoke'. By the
second issue, Daidō MORIYAMA had joined the group, but Provoke ceased
publication with its third issue. The Provoke members were well known
for what was termed their "are, bure, boke" (rough, blurry, and out of
focus) style, associated with spontaneity and thus supposedly a more
direct confrontation with reality in that it would circumvent conscious
control.
Photo books by as well as with works by Takuma NAKAHIRA
'Provoke
magazine' (1968-1970, complete reissue 2018); 'Kitarubeki kotoba no
tame ni / For a Language to Come' (1970, 2010); 'Why an Illustrated
Botanical Dictionary' (Naze, shokubutsu zukan ka, 1973); 'A New Gaze' (1983), 'Adieu à X' (1989); 'The
Japanese Box. Facsimile reprint of six rare photographic publications
of the Provoke era' (2001); 'Tokyo' (2018, facsimile version); 'Hysteric
Six' (2002); 'Degree Zero. Yokohama' (2003); 'Toshi fūkei zukan (都市 風景
図鑑, 2011); 'Takuma Nakahira Documentary' (2011); 'Circulation: Date,
Place, Events ( サーキュレーション : 日付、場所、行為, 2012); 'Okinawa shashinka shirīzu
Ryūkyū retsuzō #8' (沖縄写真家シリーズ 琉球烈像 第8巻 沖縄・奄美・吐カ喇 1974-1978, 2012);
'Overflow' (氾濫, 2018);
Further informations about the work of Takuma NAKAHIRA
While
working on Provoke, Takuma NAKAHIRA published his first photobook, 'For
a Language to Come' (Kitarubeki kotoba no tame ni), which has been
described as a masterpiece of reductionism. The cultural historian F.
Prichard reads the book as intimately concerned with the social
circumstances of 1970s Tokyo by considering the volume's relationship
Nakahira's perspective on fukei-ron (landscape discourse). In 1971,
fellow Provoke alum and Japanese commissioner for the 7th Paris Biennial
Okada Takahiko invited him to participate in the international event.
Rather than showing existing work at this prominent platform, Takuma
NAKAHIRA chose to create an entirely new work based on his encounter
with Paris, entitled 'Circulation: Date Place, Event' (published in 2012
as a photo volume). Over the course of a week, he shot approximately
two hundred images per day, developing them as 8 x 10 prints and hanging
them in the exhibition space while they were still wet.
By
the time he published 'Why an Illustrated Botanical Dictionary' (Naze,
shokubutsu zukan ka) in 1973. He had definitively shifted away from the
style of are, bure, boke and was instead moving towards a type of
catalog photography stripped of the sentimentality of handheld
photography, a photography resembling the illustrations of reference
books. The book itself combined photographs he had previously published
in other periodicals from 1971 to 1973 with texts written between 1967
and 1972. The 1974 installation 'Overflow' (Hanran, a homonym for
'revolt'), which was produced as he was assembling 'Why and Illustrated
Botanical Dictionary' marks his first use of color photography in a
museum installation and as a continuation of the methodology of 'Why an
Illustrated Botanical Dictionary'. Sometime after, in the mid-1970s, he
decided to mark the transition in his approach by burning most of the
negatives of his earlier work, save those for Circulation. From 1974 he
began photographing in Okinawa, the Amami Islands, and Tokara Islands,
all to the south of mainland Japan. From 1976 he further undertook
projects photographing Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, Spain and Morocco.
One point of reference for his interest in these subjects were the
Yaponesia essays by Amami-based Tohoku writer Toshio Shimao. Shimao's
essays, though sometimes overly reliant on stereotypes of the south,
proposed thinking of Japan as connected to Southeast Asia rather than
mainland Asia. These ideas proved influential not only for him, but also
for Shōmei TOMATSU, who was also photographing Okinawa around this
time, and the Japanese documentary film collective Nihon Documentarist
Union.
n 1977, at the age of
39, Takuma NAKAHIRA suffered alcohol poisoning and fell into a coma. As a
result of this trauma, he suffered permanent memory loss and aphasia,
effectively ending his prolific writings. This event has also
conventionally been understood as marking a change in his photographic
practice since, after a hiatus from his image making activities, he
returned to the medium in a style quite distinct from that for which he
was known. His post-1977 photographs were collected in three photobooks:
'A New Gaze' (1983), 'Adieu à X' (1989), and 'Hysteric Six Nakahira
Takuma' (2002).