The Museum für Fotographie in Berlin presents a major exhibition of postwar Japanese photography entitled Metamorphosis of Japan after the War. Photography 1945 – 1964, curated by Tsuguo Tada and Marc Feustel.

The period from 1945, the end of the Pacific War, to 1964, which saw the Olympic Games come to Tokyo, is shown through the lenses of eleven Japanese photographers. Each body of work reflects changes the country experienced following its devastation in World War II. Over the course of twenty years, Japan went through deep social, economic and cultural transformations, experienced and documented by: Hiroshi Hamaya (1915-1999), Ihee Kimura (1901-1974), Ken Domon (1909-1990), Tadahiko Hayashi (1918-1990), Ikko Narahara (1931-), Shigeichi Nagano (1925-), Yasuhiro Ishimoto (1921-), Shomei Tomatsu (1930-), Takeyoshi Tanuma (1929-), Kikuji Kawada (1933-) and Eikoh Hosoe (1933-).

The work of these photographers has become a key historical document, but it is equally remarkable on an artistic level. This exhibition shows the central role photography played in the country’s rediscovery of itself. Each photographer developed his own style: from documentary focusing on the direct consequences of the war on cities and countrysides, to more humanistic portraits of society, all the result of visual reflections based on new aesthetic standards.

A generation of photographers is brought together here, one whose dynamism and creativity laid the foundations of modern Japanese photography. The publications on display under glass, which date from the 1950s to the 1980s, show through their format, material and layout, the importance of these works in the history of photography.

The exhibition, divided into three parts entitled The Aftermath of War, Between Tradition and Modernity, and Towards a New Japan, also presents a set of vintage prints from the Kunstbibliothek on the theme of the atomic bomb. They show tests being performed in the United States (in New Mexico and Nevada) and images from the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, which remind the viewer that what happened remains as incomprehensible now as it was then.

Eva Gravayat

Exposition :

Metamorphosis of Japan after the War. Photography 1945 - 1964

March 9 - June 17 2012
Museum für Fotografie

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Jebenstrasse 2
10623 Berlin