Takashi Kijima (杵島 隆, Kijima Takashi; 1920–2011) was a Japanese photographer best known for his photographs of nudes…
Takashi Kijima (杵島 隆, Kijima Takashi; 1920–2011) was a Japanese photographer best known for his photographs of nudes and of flowers. Kijima was born in Calexico, California on 24 December 1920, the son of a Mr Watanabe, a shoe manufacturer who had immigrated in 1905, and his wife Sei (せい). The boy's name as a US citizen was Ryu Watanabe. In 1924, the Immigration Act and anti-Japanese sentiment brought the family back to Japan, where it separated: the boy's elder brother followed his father to Osaka while Takashi lived with his mother's family in Ōshinotsu (now part of Yonago), Tottori. In 1935 his father gave him a Zeiss Semi Ikonta camera, starting his interest in photography. Despite retaining US nationality at a time of anti-US sentiment, he majored in film at Nihon University, graduating in 1943. Although his elder brother was teaching Japanese to the US Navy and his father was incarcerated in a relocation camp in California (where he would become ill and die), Kijima joined the naval air corps, in a kamikaze unit. At the end of the war, carrying the Rolleicord of one of his wartime comrades, Kijima returned to Yonago and studied photography under Shōji Ueda. Kijima became a proponent of the realist views of Ken Domon, as expressed in Camera magazine. A portrait of an old woman won effusive praise from Domon on its submission to a contest held by Camera. Kijima moved to Tokyo in 1953, working for Light Publicity. He won prizes for his advertising work before and after becoming a freelance in 1956. His 1960 advertisements for Yawata Iron & Steel in Life won an advertising award from Life. He has been called "the most vigorous creator in the world of commercial photography in Japan" during the 1950s and early 1960s. He also trained younger photographers; the commercial photographer Yoichi Aoyagi (青柳陽一) studied under him for two years before going freelance. Since 1945, Kijima had also been following his own, noncommercial interest in photographing nudes in black and white outdoors. His photographing of nude women directly in front of Sakurada gate of the imperial palace in central Tokyo very early one morning in 1958 caused a great moral panic. His 1958 exhibition, titled "Ra" (裸), of nude photographs was the second held in Japan (the first was by Kira Sugiyama); more than thirty thousand people came to see it. At some time in the late 1950s Kijima and Shōzō Kitadai did the photography for an untitled set, designed by Kitadai, of four miniature books (mamebon) of photographs, distributed by Graphic Shūdan (グラフィック集団, Gurafikku Shūdan); its effective use of juxtapositions and miniature format has elevated it to fame among the Japanese photobooks of the time. Kijima gradually turned toward photographing traditional Japanese arts and nature and particularly flowers, with entire books about cherry blossoms and orchids. He specialized in kimono and until very late in his life was photographing models for the magazine Kimono Salon. Ikui has described Kijima's works as influenced by both Domon and the very different Ueda, but finding a third, commercial way. Kijima died on 20 February 2011.
Famous People from Tottori Prefecture
Tottori Prefecture: 4 people
Takeji Iwamiya (岩宮 武二, Iwamiya Takeji; 1920–1989) was a Japanese photographer particularly known for his depiction of…
Takeji Iwamiya (岩宮 武二, Iwamiya Takeji; 1920–1989) was a Japanese photographer particularly known for his depiction of architecture, gardens, and Japanese crafts.
Shōji Ueda (植田 正治, Ueda Shōji; 27 March 1913 – 4 July 2000) was a Japanese photographer from Tottori, best known for…
Shōji Ueda (植田 正治, Ueda Shōji; 27 March 1913 – 4 July 2000) was a Japanese photographer from Tottori, best known for his distinctive, dreamlike black-and-white images with staged figures, taken on the Tottori sand dunes. The term Ueda-chō (Ueda-tone) has been used to refer to his cool and mysterious atmospheric style. Ueda began using posed figures and objects in his photographs in 1939, but would be forced to cease his production due to Japan's participation in World War II. His surreal Sand Dune series, of which the first images were published 1949, was overshadowed by the predominance of social realism, a major trend in Japanese post-war photography. His oeuvre was reconsidered by critics in 1971 after the publication of the widely-appreciated photobook Warabe Goyomi (Children the Year Round), containing images of children which masterfully balanced social realism and the playfulness of Ueda's posed pictures. Since the 1970s, his work has won him international renown, and in 1995 the Ueda Shōji Museum of Photography was inaugurated. Throughout the entirety of his life, Ueda remained deeply attached to his native San'in region, and in particular his hometown of Sakaiminato.
Teikō Shiotani (塩谷 定好, Shiotani Teikō; 24 October 1899 – 28 October 1988) was a Japanese photographer whose work in the…
Teikō Shiotani (塩谷 定好, Shiotani Teikō; 24 October 1899 – 28 October 1988) was a Japanese photographer whose work in the late 1920s and early 1930s in and near Tottori, where he lived, made him a major figure in Japanese pictorialism. Despite living far from any metropolis, Shiotani was famous among photographers nationwide. He portrayed landscapes, seascapes, priests at a local temple, his family, and other quotidian matters and scenes; his images at times unmediated, at others exploiting lens aberration or using darkroom effects. Among the photographers directly influenced by him was Shōji Ueda, who lived nearby. As ideals and fashions in photography changed, Shiotani's work was largely forgotten in postwar Japan until interest was reawakened by a 1975 book devoted to his work; he later became known outside Japan thanks to an exhibition of Japanese photography that toured Europe from 1979 to 1982. Many prints made by Shiotani survive in museum collections, and since 2016 four photobooks largely or exclusively dedicated to his work have been published in Japan.