http://www.achtung.

photography/takuma-nakahira-daido-moriyama-koji-taki-yutaka-takanashi-provoke-2-provocative-materials-for-thought-
1969/
http://www.americanphotomag.com/photo-gallery/2013/06/fragments-paris-1971-on-view-today-new-york
http://lightbox.time.com/2013/06/03/the-guide-june-2013-edition/#4
 Circulation.
Date, Place, Events.
Photographs by Takuma Nakahira.
Osiris.

Selected by:
Miwa Susuda

Paris, 1971. At a biennale where young artists from around the world had gathered, Nakahira Takuma
performed an experimental project that dared to ask, “what is expression?” He attempted to
indiscriminately document a limited reality shaped by “date” and “place” and then immediately re-
“circulate” these in reality. This would be the first materialization of his own photographic methodology.

http://www.photoeye.com/magazine_admin/index.cfm/bestbooks.2012.book/catalog_number/ZF066/
Provoke: Takuma Nakahira and Yutaka Takanashi
By Russet Lederman
August 24, 2012
A few years ago, when I’d go off on a tangent about postwar Japanese photography and photobooks with
friends, I’d usually get polite yawns or blank stares. An IT / systems administrator friend would humor me by
listening intently and then responding with complete non-sequiturs about LDAP and mail server protocols – to
which I would also listen politely. It was an ongoing amicable pseudo-dialogue between two friends who knew
nothing of the details of one another’s obsessions. So, imagine my pleasure and surprise in the last two years
when several of my non-photobook-geek friends started sending me links to articles and posts about postwar
Japanese photography and photobooks. Finally, the tide was turning in western circles and knowledge about
postwar Japanese photography was expanding as a result of several recent exhibitions and important
publications on the topic. I could say the name Daido Moriyama and friends would nod knowingly, several
even mentioning his association with Provoke. But what exactly “Provoke” represented and who else was
involved was a bit fuzzier for most. Many (including myself) still use the term in its most general sense to
describe an are-bure-boke (rough, blurred, out-of-focus) visual sensibility from the late 1960s to the mid-70s.
Specificity of it being a short-lived small-press photography magazine is less known. Begun in November 1968
by a progressive collective of writers and photographers, which included Kohi Taki, Takuma Nakahira, Takahiko
Okada, Yutaka Takanashi, and Daido Moriyama (who joined with the
2nd issue), Provokemagazine, subtitled Shiso no tame no chohatsuteki shiryo / Provocative Resources for
Thoughtwas a radical rethinking of prevailing photographic conventions. Lasting just three issues and
culminating a year and half later with First Abandon the World of Pseudo-Certainty,a summary book often
cited as Provoke 4 and 5, the publication’s platform united five individuals, who despite being quite distinct
from one another were able to briefly band together and set a course that would transform Japanese
photography.

The ambitious mission of Provoke to create a new photographic language that could transcend the limitations
of the written word was declared with the launch of the magazine’s first issue. The year was 1968 and Japan,
like America, was undergoing sweeping changes in its social structure. A questioning of traditional social
conventions and a loss of confidence in existing political powers was happening in many creative disciplines
across Japan and formed the foundation that fueled Provoke’smission. Unified under a manifesto that
advocated conceptualism over realism, Provoke ‘s photographers and writers moved beyond issues of what to
photograph, and sought to uncover and question the essential nature of photography itself. The visual results
flouted the precision of earlier documentary modes in favor of a less focused imagery that allowed for chance
and the unknown to reveal itself in the photographic process. It is for this reason, that more often than not,
general surveys of 1960s/70s Japanese photography attribute the catchall phrase of “are-bure-boke.”
However, the aesthetic reality of the individual Provoke photographers can be better understood in an
analysis that moves away from a one size fits all categorization and looks to the subtle and nuanced
differences that define their unique artistic vocabularies. Over the past few years, with the combination of an
increased interest in the work of Daido Moriyama, the release of numerous Provoke member facsimiles and
reprints, and the publication of several English language reference sources, interest in this collective has
expanded to finally allow a review of the variations that define the individual Provoke photographers. Two
figures in particular, Takuma Nakahira and Yutaka Takanashi, are now receiving significant attention as a result
of a 2012 Takanashi exhibition in Paris and the recent publication of monographs and reprints by both
photographers.

Nakahira’s seminal 1970 monograph For a Language to Come (2010 reprint) and his Circulation: Date, Place
Events (2012) collection of Paris images from 1971 reveal his quest to capture a world that is unseen by the
human eye; a dark brooding visual space on the precipice of the unknown that can only be exposed through
the lens of a camera. Sporadically interrupted by people, his photographs in For a Language to Come conjoin
landscapes and urban-scapes as he pushes images to the edge of what is recognizable. He contorts and
reshapes forms into a language beyond words as he balances fragments of a reality that is simultaneously
known and otherworldly. The results are an affirmation of the tenants first introduced in
the1968 Provoke manifesto, “Today, when words are torn from their material base – in other words, their
reality – and seen suspended in space, a photographer’s eye can capture fragments of reality that cannot be
expressed in language as it is” (qtd. in Badger and Parr, “The Photobook: A History, Vol. 1” 270). Nakahira’s
blurry images are not a simple disregard for the conventions of photography, but rather a conscious effort to
reveal the unconscious as he takes the ingrained idea of what something is and turns it on its head.

In the autumn of 1971, Nakahira was invited to participate in the Seventh Biennale of Paris. Arriving at the
deserted exhibition hall in an eastern Parisian suburb, Nakahira was disappointed to find “so-called
‘contemporary art’ reaching the culmination of its own fully exposed ‘futility’” (Nakahira, “Circulation” 291). In
response to the pessimism that the Biennale evoked, Nakahira decided to rethink his participation. Rather
than exhibit the photographs he had brought with him from Japan of compressed and fragmented
environments verging on the abstract, his response was to once again question the nature of photography and
set himself a framework that would be dictated by the “here and now” of the Paris he was living and
experiencing. By embracing the unknown “assaults” of his Parisian surroundings, Nakahira set out each day to
photograph the streets, the exhibition hall, and anything else that crossed his camera’s lens. Later each night,
he developed the results into 8×10 prints, which he would then exhibit the following day in the Biennale space
allotted him. By the end the week, Nakahira had exhibited 1500 photographs. More distinct and recognizable
than the earlier images presented in For a Language to Come, the Paris photographs of Circulation: Date,
Place, Eventsonce again transcend a direct representation of the city itself in favor of a second reality that
reveals a world at the edge of consciousness. It is a parallel space that is decidedly familiar — even mundane –
while it very subtly hints at the unknown.

On first glance the work of Yutaka Takanashi seems incredibly similar to the dark brooding landscapes and
cityscapes of Takuma Nakahira. There is the familiar blurry image quality and the visually indecipherable that
hangs at the edge of reality – yet there is also a lightness and hint of openness that lifts Takanashi’s images
beyond an apocalyptic pessimism of no return. His work first came to the attention of Nakahira in 1966, when
he contributed several of his Tokyo-jin (Tokyo People)photographs, which initially appeared in a 36-page
feature in the Japanese photography magazineCamera Mainichi, to a group show at the National Museum of
Modern Art. Nakahira, who was then an editor at Gendai no me (Modern Eye) magazine, was immediately
impressed by Takanashi’s photos of densely populated Tokyo streets throbbing with the newly minted
salarymen and office ladies of the postwar era. He invited Takanashi to join him, Okada and Taki in co-
founding Provoke magazine.

The subsequent photographs that Takanashi took during this period also form the basis of his 1974
book Toshi-e / Towards the City, which is often considered the final phase of the more general Provoke period.
Clearly revealing an admiration for and an allegiance to the photographs in Nakahira’sFor a Language to
Come, Takanashi’s Toshi-e images are presented within an elaborately stark, yet beautiful photobook designed
by the incredibly inventive Japanese graphic designer Kohei Sugiura. Encased within black cloth covered
boards inlaid with a gleaming silver disc, Toshi-e is actually two bodies of work: the raw, often somewhat
deserted Nakahira-inspired spaces of the hardcover, and the densely populated images of Tokyo-jin, which are
presented almost as an after thought in a more modest booklet that accompanies the hardcover volume.
Together, these landscapes and cityscapes elucidate Takanashi’s all-pervading interesting in the city — its
rhythms, tempo, and the potential for alienation. With the city as his primary means of chronicling a Japan in
transition from agrarian culture to urbanization, Takanashi not only speaks to the alienation that comes with a
modernized Japan, but also to the inevitable loss of century old traditions. Toshi-e was reprinted in 2010
by Errata Editions in their Books on Books series, an ongoing project to reprint rare and out-of-print
photobooks.

As a Provoke member, Takanashi was never exclusively a photographer of blurry images. A recent photobook,
which accompanies a 2012 exhibition of his work at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris, presents the
opportunity to see two distinct sides of Takanashi’s visual sensibility from the late 1960s and early 70s.
Organized into three sections, Yutaka Takanashi published jointly by RM Verlag and Toluca Editions presents
his iconic black-and-white Toshi-e images as the second sequence between two color series that came shortly
afterwards: Golden Gai Bar and Machi. The direct, more documentary approach of these photographs also
explores a Tokyo in transition, but with a sense of optimism and warmth that is less visible in the more
alienating images of Toshi-e. In the insightful essay, which complements the three series presented in the
book, photo historian Ferdinand Brueggemann rearticulates Takanashi’s comments about his work from the
1966 Camera Mainichi“Tokyo-jin” feature, “As a photographer, he moved between two extremes – on the one
hand, a ‘hunter of images’ who aims to capture the invisible; on the other, a ‘scrap picker’ who only picks up
what is visible” (27). It is these two sides of Takanashi, which can clearly be seen in the 3-part sequencing of
the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition book, Yutaka Takanashi (2012). His Toshi-e photos show
theProvoke hunter who seeks to unearth a new language, which lies at the periphery of consciousness; while
the Golden Gai Bars and Machi series show the scrap picker who revels in the ordinary and the daily quiet
rhythms of urban neighborhoods or “machi.” However, unlike Nakahira’s 1971 Paris photos, which seek to
transcend reality in his search for a new language at the boundary of the photographer’s lens,
Takanashi’s Machi and Golden Gai Bar “scraps” are all about the here and now in a concrete sense — the
reality that is in front of his camera.

More than just blurry and out of focus, Provoke magazine was the work of five very different and distinct
photographers and writers: each with a range of aesthetic styles that continued to evolve for many years after
their Provoke involvement. To just stop at the scrap picker / hunter duality of Takanashi or Nakahira’s new
language for a reality at the edge of consciousness is to miss an opportunity to fully explore each of the five
artists who formed Provoke. For example, in 1973, Nakahira destroyed much of his Provoke work and
commenced a series that favored a simple depiction of reality similar to the indexing of an illustrated
dictionary…but that is the basis for another post. With more now being written in English on all
five Provoke collective members and future shows being organized, perhaps my non-photobook-geek friends
will start sending me links to articles on Takahiko Okata and Koji Taki…and *gasp* post-Provoke works!

Books Mentioned:
Takuma Nakahira, For A Language to Come (Tokyo: Osiris, 2010 – reprint). TR140 .N351 2010
Takuma Nakahira, Circulation: Date, Place, Events (Tokyo: Osiris, 2012). Recent acquisition. Not yet cataloged.
Yutaka Takanashi, Books on Books 6: Toshi-e / Towards the City (New York: Errata Editions, 2010 – reprint).
TR145 .T351 2010
Yutaka Takanashi, Yutaka Takanashi. (Paris and Barcelona: Toluca Éditions and RM Verlag, 2012). Exhibition
catalogue for Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson. TR140 .T351 2012
Takuma Nakahira, For a Language to Come Takuma Nakahira, For a Language to Come (1970) –
(1970) – reprint 2010 reprint 2010

Takuma Nakahira, Circulation: Date, Place, Takuma Nakahira, Circulation: Date, Place,
Events (Tokyo: Osiris, 2012) Events (Tokyo: Osiris, 2012)

Yutaka Takanashi, Yutaka Takanashi. (Paris Yutaka Takanashi, Yutaka Takanashi. (Paris
and Barcelona: Toluca Éditions and RM and Barcelona: Toluca Éditions and RM
Verlag, 2012) – Toshi-e Series Verlag, 2012) – Toshi-e Series
Yutaka Takanashi, Yutaka Takanashi. (Paris Takuma Nakahira, For a Language to Come (1970) –
and Barcelona: Toluca Éditions and RM reprint 2010
Verlag, 2012) – Machi Series

Takuma Nakahira, For a Language to Come (Tokyo: Osiris, 2010) –

Cover of reprint

http://icplibrary.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/provoke/