Avant-Garde Rising: The Photographic Vanguard in Modern Japan

Despite the rich discourse surrounding it and the dynamic practice that it engendered, the photographic avant-garde in Japan only existed for a brief period during the 1920s and ’30s. Yet it also contributed to the continuation of the production of radical visual arts and played a key role in the education of a post-war generation of Japanese artists who came of age in the 1950s and ’60s. Initially centred around Osaka and the Kansai region, the movement was inspired by contact with the work of photographers and surrealists overseas, at first through magazines and photobooks and later by touring exhibitions in Japan. This catalogue presents an impressive visual history of the movement.