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Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation May 21–August 29, 2005
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Washington, DC – The work of Shomei Tomatsu (b. 1930, Nagoya), Japan’s pre-eminent post-war photographer, has rarely been seen in the United States. This exceptional retrospective exhibition, drawn almost entirely from the artist’s collection, comprises roughly 200 photographs executed over a period of 30 years. Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and curated by Sandra S. Phillips and Leo Rubenfien. The exhibition is on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art from May 21 through August 29, 2005. A key figure in the postwar art scene of his country, Tomatsu is known for his quintessentially Japanese — and distinctly modern — photographic vision. Among Japan’s many extraordinary photographers since the 1950s (a group that includes Eikoh Hosoe, Kikuji Kawada, Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki), Tomatsu’s work is esteemed for its ability to communicate complex ideas through poetic, documentary images of everyday life. This retrospective exhibition includes examples of Tomatsu’s principal themes over 50 years of photography. It showcases his fierce independence as an artist and his ability to leap from one subject to another without concern for conventional categories. Tomatsu’s work is by turns deeply serious and purely whimsical, seeking at once to celebrate and violate the historic symbols of Japanese culture. As a child in Nagoya, the center of Japan’s automobile and aircraft industries, Tomatsu watched as his country embraced right-wing nationalism, conquered much of East Asia and then suffered catastrophic destruction during World War II; his own hometown was incinerated by American bombs. The photographer came of age in postwar Japan, an increasingly cosmopolitan environment where the foreign and new mixed continually with the native and traditional. He often says that his immediate contemporaries believed in nothing—that they saw Japan’s old beliefs crumble, yet had known such violence that they had little confidence in the future. Tomatsu shows in his photographs that personal experiences can reveal more truth about the world than the voice of any authority. Tomatsu’s era saw Japan rebuild itself headlong, as individual men and women took charge more than at any time in memory. Responsive, mobile, flexible and inexpensive, photography was an ideal medium for exploring the questions that troubled the nation, and Tomatsu did this with what his fellow photographer Daido Moriyama has called “awesome tenacity.” Even Tomatsu’s most playful work has great moral force. He has been one of the most eloquent artists of Japan’s last half-century and one of the most perceptive and articulate anywhere to study what happens when the West collides with the world beyond it. As an artist, Tomatsu has consistently created an extended series of images, some made over many years, which fit together as stories. In order to represent his creative process, Skin of the Nation does not present Tomatsu’s work in chronological order, but rather as a series of 10 principal conceptual sections: I. Après-Guerre examines work related to the rebuilding of a shattered Japan immediately after World War II, encompassing the elation and fears associated with Japan’s renascence. II. Before includes photographs of the old, impoverished and traditional Japan of Tomatsu’s childhood, from frigid farmhouses to remote mountain villages. III. The Americans presents photographic observations of Americans’ presence in Japan beginning with the end of formal occupation and spanning most of the artist’s career. IV. A-Bomb includes some of Tomatsu’s best-known work: black-and-white photographs related to the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. V. Americanization documents Japan’s absorption and reformulation of American influences. As with the photographs in The Americans, these pictures span much of Tomatsu’s career. VI. I Am a King (a title taken from one of Tomatsu’s most evocative photographic essays) focuses on Japan’s economic resurgence in the 1960s, examining both Japan’s exhilaration and the problematic Americanization associated with the country’s financial rebirth. VII. Underground City addresses Japan’s political and erotic upheavals of the late 1960s, including student riots and youth culture. VIII. The South examines the islands of Okinawa, isolated and untouched by Japan’s postwar economic boom, which Tomatsu considered to be “authentically” Japanese, in contrast with the highly Westernized culture of Tokyo. IX. The Post-Postwar dates from the early 1980s and expresses reconciliation with Japan’s defeat in World War II. This group of photographs—almost entirely in color—features abstract compositions and organic still-lives. X. Skin of the Nation is both a literal and a metaphorical reference to the surfaces that have appeared in countless pictures throughout Tomatsu’s career, from the hideously scarred skin of an A-bomb victim to the shimmering mudflats at Isahaya Bay. For Tomatsu, skin exists as a sort of map in which one can read the story of Japan—its essence and its future. CATALOGUE EXHIBITION ORGANIZATION Skin of the Nation’s presentation at the Corcoran is made possible through the generous support of the Trellis Fund, Deane and Paul Shatz, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Toshiba International Foundation, and The President’s Exhibition Fund. PRESS IMAGES ABOUT THE CORCORAN GALLERY OF ART Founded in 1890, Corcoran College of Art + Design is Washington’s only 4-year college of art and design, offers a four-year Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree program in Fine Art (painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, ceramics and digital art), Graphic Design, Digital Media Design, Photography and Photojournalism; a two-year Associate of Fine Arts (AFA) degree program in Fine Art, Photography, Graphic Design, Interior Design and Digital Media Design, a Masters of Arts (MA) degrees in Interior Design and the History of Decorative Arts, as well as a 5 year combined BFA/MA in Teaching; and a Continuing Education Program encompassing more than 250 courses and seven certificate programs aimed at meeting the needs of part-time adult students; as well as year-round classes designed especially for children and teens. The Continuing Education Program, which offers part-time credit and non-credit classes for children and adults, draws more than 3,500 participants each year. The Corcoran Gallery of Art is located at New York Avenue and 17th Street, NW, Washington, DC, and is open every day, except Tuesday, 10 am – 5 pm and until 9 pm on Thursday. The museum is closed every Tuesday. Admission to the Corcoran is: $6.75 for adults; $4.75 for senior citizens; $3 for students with current ID; and $12 for families. Free for Members and children under 12. Admission is “pay as you wish” on Monday all day and on Thursday after 5 pm. A satellite educational facility is located at the Corcoran’s historic Fillmore School in Georgetown at 1801 35th Street, NW. The public information line for the museum is (202) 639-1700 :: View images and further details from this exhibition
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