Eighty photographs of the Japanese capital Tokyo are currently on display in Cairo in the travelling exhibition ‘Tokyo Before and After’.
Organised by the Japan Foundation in Cairo, the exhibition is being held at Ahmed Shawki Museum in Dokki.
The pictures capture Tokyo in two periods: the two decades before World War II compared to images of the 2010s and later.
Japanese Ambassador Oka Hiroshi said in the opening ceremony on 7 June that this exhibition is a good opportunity to learn about Japan in a different way and from a new perspective.
“Since I came to Egypt in December last year, I have always been very surprised and impressed by the intense interest of the Egyptian people in Japanese culture.
“The Japanese drama series Oshin (1983) won the admiration of Egyptians. We are also pleased that ikebana (art of flower arrangement) and sado (tea ceremony) are familiar to Egyptians,” he said, adding that these traditional arts are not the only links between Japan and Egypt.
“There are many Japanese ballet dancers and orchestral musicians at the Cairo Opera House, which is a symbol of friendship between Japan and Egypt,” he said.
This photographic exhibition gives a realistic impression of Tokyo, this big city with many faces.
As the capital of Japan, Tokyo is the nation’s political, economic and cultural centre. The Tokyo Metropolitan Area (Greater Tokyo Area that includes the Tokyo Metropolis, Saitama, Chiba, and Kanagawa prefectures) is home to 30 million people and is recognised as one of the world’s largest megalopolises.
The first section shows photographs featured in the magazine Koga, the photobook Nippon which had been compiled by Nippon Kobo and published by ‘The Society for International Cultural Relations, and a series of snapshots of downtown Tokyo taken by Kineo Kuwabara, who was an amateur photographer at the time.
Koga was a magazine that played a leading role in transforming the styles of photographers working at the time from that of Fine Art Photography with its picturesque qualities, to the New Photography that conveyed aspects of modernism.
Another group had presented photographs that permeated with experimental spirit, capturing Tokyo as it gradually transformed into a ‘modern city’ of iron, concrete and glass after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923.
Published in 1938, the photobook Nippon with its unique design of 70 foldout pages, comprises a photomontage of images capturing the culture, nature, commerce and industry, as well as the daily lives of people living throughout Japan. In the section of the book that features photographs of Tokyo, traditional culture and modern life appear to merge dynamically, creating a remarkably striking visual effect.
Photographer Kineo Kuwabara’s snapshots had all the while focused on his individual gaze, capturing the social circumstances of the times in which notions of militarism had gradually began to deepen on the contrary to the nation’s superficial air of prosperity. This coalescence of light and darkness could indeed be described as the very archetype of Tokyo as it exists in the current.
The second section of the exhibition introduces the works of eight photographers. Each one has produced works with Tokyo as their subject at large.
Photographs of Nobuyoshi Araki, one of the most internationally renowned Japanese photographers, bring notions of Eros to their forefront have been exhibited throughout the world; with the number of photo books published so far approaching over 500 volumes.
Araki has also responded sensitively to the presence of death that lies inherent within the city of Tokyo where he was born and raised. The ‘Tombeau Tokyo’ series (2016) on display in this exhibition is precisely related to this genealogy, presenting the idea of likening Tokyo to a ‘graveyard’.
Daido Moriyama has been a leading figure in the context of Japanese photographic expression since the 1960s. He has devoted himself to the style of taking photographs through his entire body as a receptor while wandering through city streets. This technique appears to reach the height of sophistication in his 2015 photobook Dog and Mesh Tights, which captures Tokyo as a collection of textures as conveyed through various things.
This exhibition attempts to present an installation comprising all the images featured in ‘Dog and Mesh Tights’, which are reassembled in the manner of a wallpaper pattern.
Mika Ninagawa is among the female photographers who had at once emerged in the 1990’s. Her popularity is by far the most outstanding. She has continued to produce a diverse array of works ranging from commercial photographs to self-portraits, and featured on this exhibition is the series ‘Tokyo Innocence’ (2013) that places the spotlight on the myriad of bizarre individuals who live within the Tokyo metropolis.
Through citing otaku imagery such as anime characters, Ninagawa captures the various models that drift back and forth along the boundaries between man and woman, artifice and maturity, fiction and reality in photographs reminiscent of a tableau vivant.
Before reaching Egypt, the exhibition was held in Germany, Oman, Croatia and Iran. It is scheduled to head to Central and South America after it ends here on July 5.
Ahmed Shawki Museum, 6 Ahmed Shawki St., near Giza Zoo. The exhibition is open daily (except Friday and Monday) from 10am to 8pm.
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