A History of Japanese Photography: Images of the City after Disaster

Yasufumi Nakamoro, Senior Curator of International Art (Photography), Tate

Jointly organised with the East Asian Art and Archaeology Research Seminar

Nakamori will introduce some little known critical aspects of the history of Japanese photography, namely, photographic images and visual culture surrounding selected large-scale earthquakes, from the Nohbi Earthquake in 1891 to the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake. He will pay attention to issues such as technologies, circulation, and the impact of the images, and examine their relationship to collective memory and imaginary projections of a city.

About the Speaker

Dr Yasufumi Nakamori is Senior Curator, International Art (Photography) at Tate, London. Originally from Osaka, Nakamori initially studied law at the University of Wisconsin and practiced in New York City and Tokyo before undertaking a second career in art history following 9/11, going on to obtain his PhD in art history from Cornell University. Prior to joining Tate Modern, Nakamori was department head of photography and new media at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. From 2008-2016 he was curator of photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where his exhibitions included Katsura: Picturing Modernism in Japanese Architecture Photographs by Ishimoto Yasuhiro (2010) and For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968–1979 (2015). His catalogue Katsura: Picturing Modernism in Japanese Architecture , which traced the collaboration between photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto and Pritzker prize-winning architect Kenzo Tange for the making of the 1960 book titled Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture , won the 2011 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Exhibitions from the College Art Association.

Organiser: Pamela Corey

Contact email: pc50@soas.ac.uk