The spring-summer 2023 exhibition at the Maison de la culture du Japon in Paris is the first in France devoted to one of the most significant figures in the history of Japanese photography: Ken Domon (1909-1990). It brings together around a hundred images of this pioneer of realistic photography, produced between the 1930s and 1970s. The many facets of his work are revealed here: his approach to photojournalism at the start of his career, the inevitable turn towards photography of propaganda in the 1930s, then his fascination with ancient temples and Buddhist sculpture, his touching portraits of street children and celebrities, and his moving testimony on Hiroshima.

Ken Domon’s work has left a lasting mark on the history of photography in Japan by laying the foundations of contemporary photographic creation, to the point of being, even today, considered an essential reference. Domon has sought throughout his life to obtain the most realistic images possible, without lapsing into any misery. As a new wind blew over Japan at the end of the war, his gaze, without filters, rested on society in general and on daily life:

“The social reality of daily life imposes itself on me at least as much as the traditions or the ancient culture of Nara and Kyoto; the common point of my interest in these two subjects is my attempt to understand the link that these realities have with the destiny of the Japanese, their anger, their sadness, their joy. attested Ken Domon.

This realism which is his signature and which, by definition, “stripped photography of all sentimentality”, is undeniably the guiding thread of the exhibition at the Maison de la culture du Japon in Paris which, theme after theme, focuses on retracing Domon’s ambitious journey to capture Japanese culture as a whole. In particular, it presents the two reports that most clearly reflect the social realism characteristic of his work, namely: Hiroshima (1958), considered by the Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburô Ôe as the first work of contemporary art inspired by the atomic bomb to be about the living and not about death, and The Children of Chikuhô (1960), a photographic series that bears witness to the poverty that plagues the mining villages in the south of the country, focusing on the lives of street children. Ken Domon became the leader of realistic photography in Japan in the 1950s. He was certainly influenced by great Western photographers such as Cartier-Bresson and Eugene Smith, alongside whom he exhibited in Tokyo in 1951 and 1953.

In another section, the Portraits series reveals to viewers the faces of personalities in different fields – artistic, literary, cultural or scientific – such as the writers Yukio Mishima and Jun.ichirô Tanizaki, the artists Foujita, Tarô Okamoto and Yûsaku Kamekura, the director Yasujirô Ozu or the actor Toshirô Mifune. The last part of the exhibition is dedicated to Domon’s longest photographic series, Pilgrimage to Ancient Temples, a collection of images of Buddhist statues and architecture, hidden treasures and discreet landscapes, immortalised during travels across the country as he sought to capture the beauty of sacred places in ancient times.

“We can speak of Ken Domon’s work as an autobiography, a personal rather than a social documentation, which translates his constant concern to fix on film a moment of dialogue with the subjects. His gaze fixed on the latter, whether it is a landscape, a sculpture, a person or an object, acts as the revealer of a universal beauty seen through a lens that does not ignores any of the physical characteristics of the represented form.” says the curator, Rossella Menegazzo.

Celebrated by the opening in 1983 in Sakata (his birthplace, in the department of Yamagata) of a museum dedicated to a prolific work, Ken Domon had only very rarely been exhibited abroad: in Germany in 1990 and in Italy in 2016. He had never benefited of an exhibition in France. This will be done in the spring thanks to the Maison de la culture du Japon in Paris, which is paying a tribute to a creator who has endeavored to paint a complete portrait of Japanese culture. This event highlights the fact that Domon, with the help of friends and personalities from the artistic world such as Yûsaku Kamekura and Sôfû Teshigahara, was able to initiate a real cultural transition in the 1950s, definitively putting aside the spirit of defeat to give birth to a contemporary Japanese aesthetic praised around the world.

Photographs from the collection of the Ken Domon Museum of Photography.

Curators:
Rossella Menegazzo, Professor of East Asian Art History at the University of Milan With the support of: Ken Domon Museum of Photography, MondoMostre

With the assistance of: Association for the MCJP

Ken Domon – Le Maître du Réalisme Japonais
April 26 – July 13, 2023
Maison de la culture du Japon à Paris
101 bis, Quai Jacques Chirac
75015 Paris
Metro Bir-Hakeim RER Champ de Mars Tel. 01 44 37 95 00/01
www.mcjp.fr

Schedule :
Tuesday – Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Closed on public holidays Free admission

The editors of this new book about street photography characterize the practitioners of their subject matter in hipster idioms – ‘the slicers and dicers of the flow of reality, recidivist shoot-and-scram merchants’ – picturing them as foot-loose voyeurs who get their kicks from capturing the uncanny, the incongruous, the sorrowful and the surreal. Defining the territory in such catchy and catholic terms gives them carte blanche for their selection of photographers from around the world. It is a strength of Reclaim the Street but also a weakness.

The photobook’s global dimension is admirable, featuring photographers whose work is more likely to be found on social media sites than in print form. Working in diverse places, from Bangladesh to Brazil, their combined output is prodigious – Instagram showcases talent but short attention spans of its followers encourage quantity more than quality — and this is reflected in the five hundred images that are spread across three hundred and twenty pages of Reclaim the Street. In addition to the book’s undeniable visual impact, the more than forty photographers featured in the book speak in their own words about their methods and motivations.

However, the editors’ minimalist deployment of a sense of history allows for too many photographs to be included that are only of passing interest. A nod is given to tradition in a subsection with the heading ‘Art?’ and the use of a lower case ‘s’ when Cartier-Bresson is mentioned — ‘the legacy of surrealism remains a key motivator in much modern street photography’ – allows the cultural movement that was Surrealism to be co-opted for highlighting photographs that merely happen to capture something contingent, quirky or mildly humorous. This can become tiresome but a directory of the photographers’ websites at the back of the book allows readers to check out for themselves the range of their work. Some of Tavepong Pratoomwong’s photographs, for instance, may be superficial but his mastery of colour and talent for composing memorable images is more than just congenial.

The traditional domain of street photography was cities like London, Paris and New York and, besides the whole digital revolution, a reason for the eclipse of their importance in this regard is the paradigm shift taking place in the personality of public spaces. The street in these cities as the public zone it once was is disappearing, becoming instead a space framed by market exchange, a privatised space in more than the neoliberal, economic sense. Óscar Monzon and Stuart Paton are alert to this when they take to the street with their cameras; Paton describes Milan’s city’s street code as ‘pretty ugly … body language screams that you just don’t exist.’ In London especially, public spaces risk becoming essentially private environs where a photographer who is not pointing a camera at themselves can be regarded as proxy for the constant CCTV surveillance. Melissa O’Shaughnessy, Andre D. Wagner and David Rothenberg, sallying out on the streets of New York, are not deterred. O’Shaughnessy is following in the footsteps of mostly male photographers but, unlike her exceptional predecessor Diane Arbus, avoids the uncomfortable and has more in common with the work of Elliott Erwitt. Manhattan is Rothenberg and O’Shaughnessy’s territory but a very different neighbourhood, Bushwick in Brooklyn, is where Andre D. Wagner lives, photographing it relentlessly ‘to make honest and relatable work that speaks to the trials and triumphs of the everyday person’.

Reclaim the Street’s achievement, responding to the way street photography’s geographic axis has tilted away from Europe and the US, is at its best when drawing attention to photographers who are relatively unknown, like Irina Sokolova in St Petersburg and Nayeem Siddique from Chittagong. Siddique responds to street life in his country because, as he says, ‘people are so friendly and curious that they will always look at your camera’. This does not prevent him from responding to a scene near a cattle market – two cattle in the back of a truck being taken to slaughter – when the sky turns a warning red behind the vehicle.

The striking images in this compendium are serious ones like those of Éléonore Simon who, conscious of the way Valparaíso also fascinated Sergio Larraín, finds the city in Chile a rich resource for her play with shadows and a self-professed intention to create ‘a calm and serene view created out of our chaotic and overcrowded urban environments.’ The book’s lacuna, nevertheless, is a downplaying of street photography emerging from engaged and critical positions in favour of an upbeat, feel-good approach. While the title happily borrows the name of the Reclaim the Streets collective – which opposes the way corporate forces are usurping community ownership of public spaces – the contents give a low profile to documentary or leftist-enlightened photography of social and political events unfolding on streets around the world.

Sean Sheehan

Reclaim the Street, eds. Stephen McLaren and Matt Stuart

Little Big Galerie presents the exhibition of Sandra Reinflet : VoiE.X, artists under constraints.

How do you live as a painter, dancer, director or poet in Papua New Guinea, Iran, Mauritania, Madagascar or Brazil?
How do you make art your profession when it seems to be the last priority of a government, when religion rules, when there is no structure for distribution or when it is muzzled by censorship?

The VoiE.X series, produced between 2016 and 2021, presents portraits of artists who pose the act of creation as an act of resistance in contexts where living from art is a challenge. Their work then goes beyond the artistic field to become political and social, questioning the freedom of creation, expression, action, in short, freedom itself.

Each course is unique but all have in common to overcome, even to divert the constraints to achieve. As the details are hidden as much in the vanishing lines as in those of the face, the portraits are taken at wide angle. A way of sketching an intimate geography where the subject and its environment are linked, willingly or by force.

During the health restrictions of 2020 and 2021, Sandra Reinflet naturally decided to extend this work to France. Since the moment when culture was officially categorized as “non-essential”, the question of the place of artists has arisen more than ever.

About Sandra Reinflet
When she has to decline a profession, she ventures: inventor of true stories.
Sandra Reinflet uses photography and text to stage reality – assuming that everything is fiction as soon as you choose a setting.
Her series VoiE.X, artists under constraints won the 2020 Roger Pic Prize from SCAM and the Carré sur Seine Members Prize. In 2014, her series “Who killed Jacques Prévert?” » (Editions de La Martinière) was honored by the Bourse du Talent. Sandra Reinflet has also just won the Great photographic assignment from the BNF.
In addition to her exhibitions in the Public Space (Meuse, Cité du Franc-Moisin, Saint-Denis Basilica, etc.), she carries out numerous cultural actions to amplify the voices of those who are not heard, or not heard enough. Sandra Reinflet has also published four books (her latest novel, Do not speak to strangers, was published by JC Lattès in 2017).

Sandra Reinflet : VoiE.X, artistes sous contraintes
Until March 30, 2023
Little Big Galerie
45 rue Lepic
75018 Paris
www.littlebiggalerie.com

_{The French born, turned NYC living artist has shot some of the biggest names in fashion and he’s not done yet}

The fashion industry is one of the most versatile industries. It’s also inclusive of skills. If you’re business oriented there’s a place for you in the business side of a brand, publications, or agency. If you’re creative then you’ll find a place as a creative director, designer, photographer, make-up artist, or hair stylist. If you’re gifted with words, you’ll find a place in editorial. If you’re relational in nature and can make things happen then public relations is your place, and if you’re into law then brands will find you of benefit as their legal counsel. The fashion industry is a well-oiled machine for just about any skill, where one will find their place.

When you sit and talk with insiders you will often hear that photographers are some of the highest paid arm in the industry. They also have an exciting role, getting to travel to exotic locations, meeting inspiring models, forming relations with respected brands, while being able to be the head of their own business. Television host turned fashion photographer Antoine Verglas has a had a successful career as fashion photographer the past thirty plus years. He opens up about his journey and what it takes to be a photographer.

How fashion photography happened

Everyone is gifted with at least one thing that they are good at, something that it doesn’t take effort and that comes naturally, that’s sparked by deep passion and talent. When a person discovers that thing, it’s a freeing and revelatory moment. Verglas was born in France and studied at E.S.C., a prestigious business school in the country. Those early days of his career was spent in front of the camera but then the urge to transition to fashion photography was biting him.

“I was lucky that it came naturally during my student years in a business school. I got some modeling jobs to help pay for my studying and started to befriend photographers. I looked more and more at fashion magazines and spent time in photo studios. At the time, I had a Swedish model girlfriend and I started to take pictures of her for fun. It became a passion and obsession after a brief stint as a TV program host on Channel 5 in France and a try as a photographer’s agent.”

The television host thing ended. Veglas wanted to stay in TV but often in life when one door closes and won’t reopen, it’s an obvious redirection. “The Channel La 5 that Silvio Berlusconi was heading stopped after a year,” he remembers. “I tried to propose on Channel 2 a program on advertising and TV commercials, which was not accepted. It was a program similar to what I was hosting on Channel 5, and I thought I would become another TV personality. I had to wait a year for the new grill of programs. I got more gigs in TV commercials but they were becoming less glamorous, and I didn’t want to go back to modeling. I tried to represent photographers’ friends, but they were too difficult on the type of jobs I was getting for them, so I decided to do it myself.”

Verglas thought his post university studies would lead him to advertising, however trying many things and having up and down experiences, which prepared him for the rigors of these industries he was trying things in, led him to realize what he wanted to do. “I had a genuine interest in specialized magazines on advertising and communications. Modeling brought me to appear in 30+ TV commercials, advertising campaigns, catalogs, and editorials. TV hosting came out of the blue through casting and it was actually a fantastic experience. I learned at a pretty young age, at 24 how to deal with some types of fame and criticism on multiple forms, politics, and the inside of TV network. But TV hosting was definitely not my calling and I failed.”

Breakthrough

“My breakthrough moment came when I decided to follow and accompany my model girlfriend to NYC. She was a face of the 80s contest winner of the Ford Model Agency and had to honor her contract. I decided to go along with an idea to report on top models in their intimacy of very natural black and white portraits, and candid questions interviews.”

“A French top model, Estelle Lefebure, introduced me to her modeling agency, Elite models and to her director and the right hand of John Casablancas, Monique Pillard. Pillard was seduced by the idea and gave me access to her roster of top models: Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Stephanie Seymour, to name a few. I managed to get Claudia Schiffer in another agency. It took me about 3 to 4 months to get an hour or so with the ten top models, to shoot and interview them. At the time, I was still living in Paris and French Elle and French Photo were the magazines I wanted to propose the story. The dream came true, and they both published it.

While Verglas has found success, he’s amenable to share with others how they can get to where he is. His advice is simple, try things. “For those who struggle to find their calling, my advice is to try many things, explore different fields, take risks, and don’t be afraid to fail. You never know where your passion lies until you try. Keep an open mind, and don’t limit yourself,” he says.

Photographing the big names

Verglas has taken portraits of Halle Berry and Cindy Crawford, he has done commercial shoots for Badgley Mischka and Louis Vuitton, and his work has been featured in GQ, Sports Illustrated, and Elle. Many photographers dream to reach this level, so I ask if he feels he has arrived. “You are always as good as your last job,” he muses. “You never truly “arrive” in photography. You can reach a certain level of notoriety but it can be very fickle. I have always been fascinated by the longevity of careers of Patrick Demarchelier and Gilles Bensimon, and how they have surfed the waves of this industry for over five decades. I really believe that, like in any job or discipline, the day you think you have arrived is the beginning of the end for you. It implies that you no longer challenge yourself and are not looking to progress and improve your skills.”

A typical day

His typical day to day is simple but full. “I get up early, go to the studio, shoot, select images, take care of my kids and dog, work with my wife on her business (clic.com), review and trade in the stock market, and socialize in the evening. My routine is from 7 PM to midnight.”

His home is New York City and while the pandemic saw a lot of people leave the Big Apple, Verglas doesn’t seem to ever dream of doing a thing like that. “I loved NYC the minute I arrived here. The optimism, cosmopolitanism, speed, energy, noise, and how easy it was to meet people. The adrenaline and excitement this city gave me back in the late 80s and early 90s. Paris is beautiful, charged with so much history, and I must say I’m happy to be able to spend time in both cities.”

Speaking of the pandemic, it did affect fashion and fashion photography. “The world has changed. More people want to work remotely. Some models started to shoot themselves with brands they called, and turned into photographers themselves. Instagram, Tik Tok, and now AI are totally changing the world of fashion and fashion photography. AI is actually very scary to me. Soon, you don’t need models, stylists, hair and makeup artists, or photographers any longer. The technology can replace them all. And it goes for a lot of actors in different industries, not only fashion. I am worried for the new generations and the world they will inherit from us. I have a true and sincere nostalgia when I look at pictures, reportage, and movies depicting the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s.”

Verglas has reason to fear and not just him, models as well and Lord knows who else. Lots of creatives will be out of jobs with the advancement of AI and influencers. Brands from Nike to Dior to Valentino heavily use AI technology. One positive of using AI is that the industry can cut down on textile waste. Fashion is the second most unsustainable industry in the world. But, people and economies will suffer with job loss and relationship loss. But Verglas isn’t totally opposed to technology. His advice to someone thinking about going into photography is this:

“Ten to twenty years ago I would have said go to museums, enrich yourself with paintings, sculptures, etc. Look at the years of Vogue, Bazaar, and Elle, look at fashion photographers’ books, go to photo galleries, and be an encyclopedia of fashion photography. Today, you need to do that too, of course, but additionally, be extremely savvy of new possibilities that technology offers.”

Antoine Verglas has shot dozens of magazines covers and shot well known fashion campaigns. But he remains humble, never thinking he has “arrived.” He often doesn’t feel he’s that good but au contraire. “I am just happy to share what I do and I hope people like it. Personally, I never think it’s good enough.” But those in the industry knows how gifted he is and I suspect we’ll see his work around for a long time to come, even with the rise of AI.