Shomei Tomatsu : skin of the nation /
Leo Rubinfien, Sandra S. Phillips, John W. Dower ; preface by Daido Moriyama.
- 223 pages : illustrations (some colour) ; 27 cm
Catalog of the exhibition held Sept. 22, 2004-Jan. 2, 2005 at the Japan Society, New York, May 21-Aug. 29, 2005 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and Feb.-May, 2006 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 214-216).
Director's foreword / Preface / Shomei Tomatsu : the skin of the nation / Currents in photography in postwar Japan / Contested ground : Shomei Tomatsu and the search for identity in postwar Japan / Plates. Neal Benezra -- Daido Moriyama -- Leo Rubinfien -- Sandra S. Phillips -- John W. Dower --
"Born in 1930 in Nagoya, Japan, Shomei Tomatsu came of age during the devastation of World War II. As a teenager he defied air-raid sirens to watch B-29 bombers roaring overhead; in 1950, as a university student, he began to take his first photographs. Drawing deliberately on the legacy of Surrealism and the Western documentary tradition, the self-taught photographer quickly emerged as one of his generation's most sensitive observers of postwar Japan." "... this catalogue - the first comprehensive publication on Tomatsu to appear in English - includes essays addressing his fifty-year career, his artistic influences, and his historical context. A selection of excerpts from Tomatsu's own writings, many of which have never appeared in English, offers an intimate encounter with the issues and themes addressed in his photographs."--BOOK JACKET.