Kikuji Kawada

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Kikuji Kawada (川田 喜久治, Kawada Kikuji, born 1933) is a Japanese photographer.[1][2] He co-founded the Vivo photographic collective in 1959.[3] Kawada's books include Chizu (The Map; 1965) and The Last Cosmology (1995).[4] He was included in the New Japanese Photography exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1974[5] and was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Photographic Society of Japan in 2011.[6]

Life and work[edit]

Kawada co-founded the Vivo photographic collective in 1959 with Akira Sato, Eikoh Hosoe, Ikko Narahara, Akira Tanno and Shomei Tomatsu.[3] Sean O'Hagan described it as having "broke the traditions of photojournalism and landscape photography, leading it towards a more experimental, often polemical form."[4]

Kawada's book Chizu (The Map) has been praised by critics. Brett Rogers, director of The Photographers' Gallery, London, has said it is a "deeply moving and highly original investigation into a seminal moment in Japanese history."[7] In The Photobook: A History, Vol. 1, Martin Parr and Gerry Badger describe Chizu as being amongst four books that "constitute photography's most significant memorials to the defining event in twentieth-century Japanese history" and that it is "the ultimate photobook-as-object, combining a typical Japanese attention to the art of refined packaging with hard-hitting photography, text and typography – a true photo-text piece. No photobook has been more successful in combining graphic design with complex photographic narrative."[8] O'Hagan wrote in The Guardian that it is "perhaps the most intricately designed and powerfully evocative Japanese photobook ever [ . . . ] By turns impressionistic and surreal, the book demands a degree of patient, silent contemplation that echoes the act of remembering."[7]

O'Hagan wrote of The Last Cosmology (1995) that "the strange skies full of lunar portents, forks of lightning, fleeting meteorites and blocked out suns are a kind of mirror of Kawada's brooding, troubled soul. He spent his youth in the long shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and made the images in The Last Cosmology between 1980 and 2000 – a time of global uncertainty." He added that the images also evoke "a sense of impending catastrophe."[4]

Publications[edit]

  • Chizu (地図) = The Map.
    • Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, 1965. Text by Kenzaburō Ōe.
    • Tōkyō-to Chōfu-shi: Getsuyōsha, 2005. ISBN 9784901477161. Text in Japanese and English.
    • Tucson, AZ: Nazraeli, 2005. ISBN 9781590051238. Text in Japanese and English. Edition of 500 copies.
    • Chizu (Reprint Edition). Tokyo: Akio Nagasawa, 2014. OCLC 951442394. With texts in English by Ōe, "Map," and Kawada, "On the re-reprint of "Chizu" (1965)". Edition of 600 copies.
  • ''ラスト・コスモロジー = The Last Cosmology.
  • Cosmos of the Dream King. Tokyo: Asahi Sonorama, 1995.
  • Kikuji Kawada. Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten, 1998. ISBN 9784000083737. Text in Japanese.
  • Japan, 1951–1960. Nazraeli Press Six by Six, set 5 v. 3. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2014. ISBN 9781590054024. Edition of 100 copies.
  • Remote Past A Memoir 1951–1966. Tokyo: Case, 2016. With an afterword by Rei Matsuda, in Japanese and English. Edition of 1000 copies.
  • Chizu (Maquette Edition). London: Mack, 2021. ISBN 978-1-912339-71-6.[11]

Awards[edit]

Exhibitions[edit]

Solo exhibitions[edit]

  • Kikuji Kawada - The Last Cosmology, Michael Hoppen Gallery, London, 2014/15.[12]
  • Kukuji Kawada: Last Cosmology, L. Parker Stephenson Photographs, New York, 2014/15.[13]
  • Kikuji Kawada: Los Caprichos-Instagraphy-2017, P.G.I Gallery, Tokyo, 2018.[14]
  • Kikuji Kawada: Then & Now, L. Parker Stephenson Photographs, New York, 2016.[15]
  • Kikuji Kawada: 100 Illusions, Cannon Gallery S, Tokyo, 2018.[16]

Group exhibitions[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ O'Hagan, Sean (19 March 2015). "Dark night rising: the photographer who captured the mystery of the eclipse". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 April 2015.
  2. ^ (in Japanese) Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, editor. 328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers (『日本写真家事典』, Nihon shashinka jiten). Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2000. ISBN 4-473-01750-8
  3. ^ a b Kōtarō Iizawa, "The evolution of postwar photography" (chapter of Tucker et al., The History of Japanese Photography), pp. 217, 210.
  4. ^ a b c O'Hagan, Sean (19 March 2015). "Dark night rising: the photographer who captured the mystery of the eclipse". the Guardian. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
  5. ^ a b "New Japanese Photography", Museum of Modern Art. Accessed 5 January 2015.
  6. ^ a b "Photographic Society of Japan Awards", Photographic Society of Japan. Accessed 5 January 2015.
  7. ^ a b O'Hagan, Sean (19 October 2014). "Top of the shots: photographers' favourite photobooks". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 January 2015.
  8. ^ Martin Parr; Gerry Badger (2004). The Photobook: A History, Volume I. London: Phaidon. p. 274,286. ISBN 978-0-7148-4285-1.
  9. ^ "The Last Cosmology by Kikuji Kawada". AnOther. 30 November 2014. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
  10. ^ Feuerhelm, Brad (20 March 2015). "In Kikuji Kawada's 'The Last Cosmology' - A Retinal Burn in Search of Answers from the Ecliptic and Permeating Darkness". American Suburb X. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
  11. ^ "From Hokusai to Himid: the unmissable art and architecture of autumn 2021". The Guardian. 26 August 2021. Retrieved 2021-09-30.
  12. ^ "Kikuji Kawada - The Last Cosmology", Michael Hoppen Gallery. Accessed 5 January 2015.
  13. ^ Kikuji Kawada: Last Cosmology", L. Parker Stephenson Photographs, New York
  14. ^ https://www.pgi.ac/en/exhibitions/status/past/], P.G.I. Gallery, Tokyo
  15. ^ Kikuji Kawada- Then & Now, L. Parker Stephenson Photographs, New York
  16. ^ "Kikuji Kawada - 100 Illusions"
  17. ^ "Case 2: Eyes of Ten and VIVO", Art Institute of Chicago. Accessed 6 January 2015.
  18. ^ "Conflict, Time, Photography". Tate Modern. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
  19. ^ "Conflict, Time, Photography". Museum Folkwang. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
  20. ^ "Conflict, Time, Photography". Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Archived from the original on 25 September 2015. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
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