The Open Eye Gallery’s current exhibition, organized by the Japan Foundation showcases 123 black-and white photographs by 11 renowned post-war Japanese photographers, including Ihee Kimura, Ken Domon and Eikoh Hosoe. The Metamorphosis of Japan after the War, presents a retrospective review of the creative energy of Japanese society during the turbulent period that followed the War.
In 1945, post-war Japan made a new start from the ashes of
devastation. In the twenty years leading up to the Tokyo Olympics of 1964, it
succeeded in undergoing a dramatic transformation, embarking on a path towards
becoming an economic power.
These two decades constituted a period truly brimming with
creative energy – a time in which democracy led to the restoration of vitality and
free photographic expression, in which new talent pioneered post-war
photography.
Rather than arranging
the works chronologically, by period and author, this exhibition is divided
into three sections – “The Aftermath of the War,” “Between Tradition and Modernity,”
and “Towards a New Japan” to showcase the
metamorphosis of Japan after the war.
When I first entered the exhibition space, this arrangement
struck me as arbitrary. However, after viewing the collection of photographs in
their entirety, it was clear that this was a judiciously curated retrospective;
as in fact the sequence provided the viewer with a vivid narrative of the convoluted
aspects of this complicated era in Japans history.
The works presented in this exhibition are a reflection of
the complexity of modern Japanese identity. The photographs present the profound
changes in all areas of Japanese society and their economy, which characterized
the post-war period. Many of these changes were extremely abrupt and threw wide
open the question of what was becoming of Japanese identity. During the
post-war years Japanese photography went through one of the most effervescent
periods in its history. Although the artists presented in this exhibition have
radically different and sometimes opposing photographic approaches, they are
united by their unwavering desire to grapple with the fundamental question,
“What is Japan?”. It is my hope that their work continues to be shown, in Japan
of course, but also in the West. Their images bring to life an extraordinary
period of human struggle and social transformation and the commitment that they
showed to their times has yet to be surpassed.
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