Hara Chikei | Keizo Kitajima Photo Exhibition: Borrowed Place, Borrowed Time
The Keizo Kitajima photo exhibition at the Nagano Prefectural Museum of Art reviewed 50 years of his work, tracing his shift from intense urban documentation to typological portraits.Summary
The exhibition "Keizo Kitajima Photo Exhibition: Borrowed Place, Borrowed Time," held at the Nagano Prefectural Museum of Art, retrospectively covered the 50-year career of the representative Japanese photographer Keizo Kitajima. After starting his career through Daido Moriyama's workshop, Kitajima initially focused on reducing the time lag between shooting and presentation with works like the "Photo Express Mail" series, documenting cities like Tokyo, Okinawa, New York, and the USSR with intense snapshots. The exhibition traces his methodological shift following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. His later works include the "PORTRAITS" series, characterized by typological compositions of individuals against a white background based on strict rules, and "UNTITLED RECORDS," which objectively documented Japanese landscapes, including areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake. While seemingly contrasting, both series share an approach of capturing political realities by excluding the photographer's intervention, using the characteristics of the photographic apparatus itself to reconstruct perspectives on humanity and society, representing an intellectual resistance to gaze upon moments of the world that cannot be owned.
(Source：artscape)