Photography

cshimokita
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I made it to Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography on Wednesday...

In between lunch and dinner engagements I stopped by the photo museum in Ebisu to look at the work of Ichiro Kojima.  They had both the original (1963) version and the reprint from 2014... so I could compare both copies of "Tsugaru: Poetry, Writings, Photography" photos by Ichiro Kojima.  The reprint had an English language supplement with a nice history of the photographer.  The original has a tangible depth of feel but shows it's age and years of viewers use.  The quality of the images in the reprint is quite good - both books are identical.

I learned that Kojima liked to create scenes with dramatic skies in which he accentuated the light between clouds by making it black... he expressed snow with rich gradations and was known to have an eye that discovered something extraordinary from mundane subject-matter.  His father (who sold photographic supplies and inexpensive cameras) established "Hokuyo Kai", one of the oldest photo groups in Japan.  Unfortunately Kojima died at the age of 39... he only photographed seriously for about ten years.

The museum library also had a copy of "Kojima Ichiro Photographs" published by Inscript, Tokyo, Japan (2009) which is still in print... well worth a look.

Casey