New Exhibition Faves

From September 12 through December 20, 2009, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will present two exhibitions: The Provoke Era: Postwar Japanese Photography and Photography Now: China, Japan, Korea. The exhibitions give SFMOMA a chance to brag a bit about their photography collection which is coincidentally one of the best in the country. Plus, the photo curator is just so darned kind! Although I did meet her in the elevator and promptly made an ass out of myself (I got off on the wrong floor, guffawed my way back into the elevator, made small chat, proceeded to insult photography (ok just photo shoots), sheepishly exited the 'vator...)
ANYWAY The Provoke Era: Postwar Japanese Photography is all about Japan in the wake of their defeat in World War II as the Japanese sought to both forget and transcend the past:

"Plagued by extreme poverty in the 1950s, the country not only accepted the presence of their American occupiers, but admired western values such as capitalism, democracy, pop culture, and jazz. This complicated and ambiguous atmosphere transformed the traditional social structure into a new egalitarian society. This collision of worlds also provided fertile emotional ground and political material for the burgeoning photographic community. Photography was ideally suited to record and respond to this complex atmosphere. During the postwar period a culture of photography, previously addressed to amateurs, saw the evolution of an important avant-garde.

"The exhibition title is derived from a small-press photography magazine, Provoke: shiso no tame no chohatsuteki shiryo (Provoke: Provocative Resources for Thought), founded by a group of photographers and writers united in their quest for a new visual language—one with a fresh way of seeing and experiencing the world. The works on view provide a context for this incendiary movement, including work from the immediate postwar period, the Provoke movement itself, and later generations who felt the impact of it."

Here are a few of the works:

Moriyama, Daido, Stray Dog, Misawa, Aomori, 1971; gelatin silver print; 7 9/16 x 11 11/16 in.; Collection SFMOMA, gift of Van Deren Coke; © Daido Moriyama

Hosoe, Eikoh, Kamaitachi #31 [Caped Kamaitachi running through field], 1968; gelatin silver print; 10 ¾ x 16 5/8 in.; Promised gift of Paul Sack to the Sack Photographic Trust; © Eikoh Hosoe

The second exhibit, Photography Now: China, Japan, Korea, features some 65 pictures, many newly acquired and on view for the first time. Enhancing the Japanese photography collection, in 2007 and 2008, SFMOMA acquired a diverse group of 50 pictures from 13 emerging photographers in China and has also added a selection of photographs from Korea.

The works in the exhibition examine the diversity of photographers working in China, Japan, and Korea. Although the photographic community in Japan blossomed in the postwar period, China, and Korea experienced this growth later and are now experiencing a renaissance in cultural expression.

A new generation of Korean photographers is beginning to make a mark on the international photography scene. With the first wave of students leaving Korea in the mid 1980s, photography reached a turning point that awakened and renewed their own cultural expression.

In China, a country whose artist population was long dormant during the Cultural Revolution, which smothered artistic production, a new interest in documentary work has revealed a passion for recording the changing face of the rapidly developing nation. After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, China opened its borders to the West and outside influences rushed in. Artists, such as Zhang Huan who formed an experimental art community outside Beijing called The East Village, sought to stage a confrontation between human expression and social and political criticism, resulting in arrests for their performances. One of the fathers of the performance art movement in the 1990s, Zhang Huan’s Foam (1), 1998 refers to the memory of the performance. Photographs become the primary means of documentation for these historic and ephemeral acts .

As has been true in Japan, photography is well suited to record the rapid changes transforming the modernizing nation. Amateurs and professionals alike contrast the collision of age-old traditions and modern western culture, resulting often in remarkable, occasionally, unsettling pictures.

Here are some pickies. The foam one I have held in my very hands. I scanned it for the marketing department. All that exists of it in our records is a slide that we own the rights to (or that's how I understand it at least):

Zhang Huan, Foam (1), 1998; chromogenic print; 41 x 27 in.; Collection SFMOMA, gift of Vicki and Kent Logan; © Zhang Huan

Yan Changjiang, Outang, from the series The Three Gorges, 2006; inkjet print; 19 11/16 x 19 11/16 in.; Collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund; © Yan Changjiang

Hatakeyam Naoya, Untitled, Osaka, 1998-1999; two chromographic prints on aluminum; each 35 x 71 in.; Collection SFMOMA, fractional and promised gift of anonymous donors; © Naoya Hatakeyama