Takuma Nakahira: At the Limits of the Gaze: Selected writings by Takuma Nakahira

(Paperback)

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The first English-language volume of Takuma Nakahira's influential writings on photography.

Takuma Nakahira was a crucial figure within the history of Japanese photography, best known outside of Japan as a founding member of Provoke, the experimental magazine of photographs, essays, and poetry, first published in Tokyo in 1968. Through Provoke, Nakahira deepened his artistic and personal connection to Daido Moriyama, with whom he developed a signature style of harsh and grainy black-and-white photography. He would eventually break with this style, and over the course of his decades-long career, maintain an experimental approach to photography. And yet, beyond his photographic practice, Nakahira was also a committed critic, writing on a range of topics hardly limited to photography: art, film, journalism, radical politics, television, and jazz. As a whole, the essays offer insight into the evolution of Nakahira's thinking. As the curator Matthew S. Witkovsky notes, "Nakahira's incisive writing cut apart standing views in literature, film, politics, and especially photography, and he published both articles and photographs at a feverish rate."

Author Bio

Takuma Nakahira (19382015; born in Tokyo) was a renowned photographer and writer who was a pivotal leader in developing Japanese photographys aesthetic and critical philosophy from the 1960s onward. In 1968, he cofounded the magazine Provoke, with Koji Taki, Yutaka Takanashi, and Takahiko Okada. He was the author of many critical essays and books on photography, media, and politics, including the collections Why an Illustrated Botanical Dictionary (1973) and Duel on Photography (1977), which paired his essays with photographs by Kishin Shinoyama. His photobooks include For a Language to Come (1970), A New Gaze (1983), Adieu X (1989), and Documentary (2011). His work has been the subject of a large-scale retrospective exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2024), and his work is held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Museum of Modern Art, New York. Daniel Abbe is an art historian based in Kyoto, Japan. He received his PhD in art history from University of California, Los Angeles. Franz Prichard is an associate professor at Florida State University, specializing in the literature, environmental thought, and visual media of contemporary Japan. In 2011, Prichard received his PhD from the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. Prichard has taught as a lecturer at UCLA, as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, and as an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Princeton University.