Japanese Photographs from the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Scenes, Signs, Sensations

The exhibition in brief

Since the late 1960s, the Bibliothèque nationale de France has established itself as one of the first Western institutions to focus on modern and contemporary Japanese photography. Already possessing a remarkable collection of Japanese prints from the 17th to the 19th centuries, it has gradually built an exceptional photographic collection.

Housed in the Department of Prints and Photography, this collection brings together nearly 4,000 prints by some 200 artists and reporters, as well as around 100 iconic magazines and books tracing the history of Japanese photography since 1945. This ensemble, one of the most significant in the Western world, was built with the cooperation of Japanese photographers who settled in France in the second half of the 20th century and became ambassadors of their archipelago’s extraordinary creative effervescence.

This major exhibition gathers around a hundred artists: authors who are now widely recognized on the international scene, but also other figures whose approaches and styles deserve to be discovered.

The originality of the BnF's Japanese photographic collection also lies in the major thematic and aesthetic axes that run through it. Sometimes anchored in reality, through reportage dedicated to the rural world, festivals, rituals, or urban and economic expansion, and other times theatrical, whimsical, or poetic, Japanese photography grants an essential place to sensations and atmospheres. It unfolds in works that combine a remarkable simplicity of composition with a great sophistication of printing.

Facing Reality

Reportage photography and its realism occupy a predominant place in post-war production, as evidenced by the reportage of Hiroshi Hamaya, the series by Hiromi Tsuchida, and those of Yoko Yamamoto, contributing to the reconstruction of a common national foundation where resilience after nuclear trauma, interest in ancestral customs, and an aspiration for modernity intermingle.

Strange Everyday Life

More intimate works, notably signed by authors of the Konpora Shashin movement such as Shigeo Gocho or Tokuko Ushioda, produced snapshots of ordinary experience in the 1960s-1980s. Through composition, framing, or unexpected encounters, banality is then tinged with strangeness.

Staged Bodies

The theatrical stagings by Shoji Ueda, Eikō Hosoe and his students, as well as Yuki Onodera and Mami Kiyoshi, reveal the influence of the highly visual world of Japan's traditional performing arts. This section brings together a large number of photographic research projects and experiments around the direction of bodies.

Hello Paris!

Many Japanese photographers present in the BnF collection have turned their gaze toward Paris, such as Ihei Kimura, Yoshi Takata, Keiichi Tahara, Mamoru Sakamoto, or Jun Shiraoka, who came to work or even live in the French capital. These viewpoints, which oscillate between curiosity and fantasy, the search for archetypes and known references, a concern to capture the particular and a rejection of any exoticism, translate the fruitful back-and-forth between the two cultures.

Calligraphies of the World

The human figure gives way to the realm of forms, influenced by the oriental art of calligraphy and a minimalism combining, as in the works of Shōmei Tōmatsu, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Takehiko Nakafuji, and up to Sayuri Ichida, the quest for purity and excellence in contrast effects.

Sensible and Impalpable

A universe of sensations and atmospheres unfolds in this section, from the dark landscapes of Hiroto Fujimoto and Kazuo Amemiya to the portraits of elements captured by Koichiro Kurita and Sayuki Inoue (wind and water). The search for sensible abstraction, according to an artistic approach to nature often imbued with Zen Buddhism, is reflected in the materiality of the prints and books, between velvety nuances and praise of shadow.