Shômei Tômatsu »
Skin of the Nation
Exhibition: 11 Jan – 15 Apr 2007
Galerie Rudolfinum
Alsovo nabrezi 12
110 00 Praha
+420 22-7059205
galerie@rudolfinum.org
www.galerierudolfinum.cz
Tue-Sun 10-18
Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation The exhibition is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with the Japan Society, New York This major retrospective represents the first comprehensive overview of the work of Shomei Tomatsu (born 1930, Nagoya) and bears witness to his status within the Japanese post-war avant-garde and his role in the development of modern Japanese photography. With approximately 240 photographs, the exhibition shows all Tomatsu's major groups of works, for example "Nagasaki 11.02" - the shattering essay on the effects of the atom bomb and the lives of the survivors - and "Chewing Gum and Chocolate", his first attempt at capturing the far-reaching Americanisation in Japan after the war – with the huge dichotomy between the military threat and the cultural attraction, the seduction of Hollywood glamour. Shomei Tomatsu takes us from traditional Japan to the Japan of economic success and shows the effects of these economic, political and cultural changes. The father of modern Japanese photography, one of the most eloquent Japanese artists of the past half-century, influenced several generations of Japanese photographers with his approach, his documentary-based, lyrical and symbolic way of seeing things. The Erwin Dubsky Collection: Photographs from Japan in the 1870s until 15 April 2007