Provoke: Between Protest and Performance: Photography in Japan 1960–1975 - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3958291007 ISBN 13: 9783958291003

Publisher: Steidl, 2016

Synopsis

The short-lived Japanese magazine Provoke, founded in 1968, is nowadays recognized as a major contribution to postwar photography in Japan, featuring the country’s finest representatives of protest photography, vanguard fine art and critical theory in only three issues overall. The magazine's goal was to mirror the complexities of Japanese society and its art world of the 1960s, a decade shaped by the country’s first large-scale student protests. The movement yielded a wave of new books featuring innovative graphic design combined with photography: serialized imagery, gripping text-image combinations, dynamic cropping and the use of provocatively "poor" materials. The writings and images by Provoke's members―critic Koji Taki, poet Takahiko Okada, photographers Takuma Nakahira, Yakata Takanashi and Daido Moriyama―were suffused with the tactics developed by Japanese protest photographers such as Nobuyoshi Araki, Eikoh Hosoe and Shomei Tomatsu, who pointed at and criticized the mythologies of modern life. Provoke accompanies the first exhibition ever to be held on the magazine and its creators. Illuminating the various uses of photography in Japan at the time, the catalogue focuses on selected projects undertaken between 1960 and 1975 that offer a strongly interpretative account of currents in Japanese art and society at a moment of historical collapse and renewal.

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Review

The photographic rebellion evident in the dynamism and experimentation of the Provoke collective offers an interesting contrast to the orderly stereotypes that has come to define post-war Japanese society. (Moises Saman Photo-Eye Blog, Best of 2016)

Provoke is an exciting piece of history, following a line from protest movement to aesthetic movement, and concluding with a section on avant-garde performance art. (Pat Padua Spectrum Culture)

Provoke’s visual language embraced movement and disorientation, rejecting prevailing modes of image-making in a society increasingly dominated by media artifice. (Sooanne Berner Dazed Digital)

In a nutshell, this essentially is the book we have all been waiting for: those who always wanted to know more about Provoke, and everybody else who is going to be in for a real photo history treat. (Joerg Colberg Cphmag.com)

Japanese photography is finally getting the recognition and scholarly treatment it deserves...the book offers incredible insight and access into this important period of the medium... Provoke: Between Protest and Performance deserves to be on the shelf of any serious scholar, critic or artist who cares about photography in the 20th century. (Adam Bell Photo-Eye Blog)

Edition details

• Publisher: Steidl
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3958291007
• ISBN 13: 9783958291003
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 680
• Editor: Witkovsky Matthew, Dufour Diane, Forbes Duncan