PROVOKE: Between PROTEST and PERFORMANCE - Photography in Japan 1960 / 1975

The short-lived Japanese magazine Provoke is recognized as a major achievement in world photography of the postwar era, uniting the country's most contentious examples of protest photography, vanguard fine art, and critical theory of the late 1960s and early 70s in only three issues overall. Provoke is accordingly treated here as a model synthesis of the complexities and overlapping uses of photography in postwar Japan. The writing and images by Provoke's members - critic Koji Taki, poet Takahiko Okada, photographers Takuma Nakahira, Yutaka Takanashi, Daido Moriyama - were suffused with the tactics developed in some Japanese protest books which made use of innovative graphic design and provocatively "poor" materials. Recording live actions, photography in these years was also an expressive form suited to emphasize and critique the mythologies of modern life with a wide spectrum of performing artists such as Nobuyoshi Araki, Koji Enokura and Jiro Takamatsu. This catalogue accompanies the first exhibition ever to be held about the magazine and its creators and focuses on its historical context. It covers the preliminary period leading to its first and the aftermath following its last issue. Provoke takes shape as a strongly interpretative explanation of currents in Japanese art and society at a moment of historical collapse and renewal.

About the Author :
Daido Moriyama, born in 1938, startetd to work as an assistant to photographer Eikoh Hosoe in 1961. He became one of the leading Japanese photographers and participated in numerous exhibitions. A major retrospective of his work opened in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1999 and travelled to Germany, Switzerland, the UK, and Japan. Daido Moriyama lives in Tokyo. Takuma Nakahira, born in 1938, photographer and critic. He co-founded Provoke together with Koji Taki in 1968. In his collection of essays Why an Illustrated Botanical Dictionary? (1973), he rejected all of his negatives. Suffering from acute alcoholism, he lost part of his memory in 1977. Nakahira died in 2015. Yutaka Takanashi, born in 1935, working as a fashion and advertising photographer in the early 1960s, he published several books, including The Tokyoites (1966) and Toward the City (1974). He received the Fifth Biennale de Paris Grand Prix for Photography in 1967. Yutuka Takanashi lives in Tokyo.Koji Taki, born in 1928, critic. Co-founder with Takuma Nakahira of Provoke. Active as a photographer only in the late sixties, he has published numerous books and essays on architecture, photography, art and other subjects since 1970. Koji Taki died in 2011.

Review :
The photographic rebellion evident in the dynamism and experimentation of the Provoke collective offers an interesting contrast to the orderly stereotypes that has come to define post-war Japanese society.--Moises Saman "Photo-Eye Blog, Best of 2016" Provoke is an exciting piece of history, following a line from protest movement to aesthetic movement, and concluding with a section on avant-garde performance art.--Pat Padua "Spectrum Culture" Provoke's visual language embraced movement and disorientation, rejecting prevailing modes of image-making in a society increasingly dominated by media artifice.--Sooanne Berner "Dazed Digital" In a nutshell, this essentially is the book we have all been waiting for: those who always wanted to know more about Provoke, and everybody else who is going to be in for a real photo history treat.--Joerg Colberg "Cphmag.com" Japanese photography is finally getting the recognition and scholarly treatment it deserves...the book offers incredible insight and access into this important period of the medium... Provoke: Between Protest and Performance deserves to be on the shelf of any serious scholar, critic or artist who cares about photography in the 20th century.--Adam Bell "Photo-Eye Blog"