The Night Is Still Young

(Paperback)

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Los Angeles-based Japanese photographer Tomoaki Hata returns to the underground club scene of Osaka's gay district. The intimate images of the radically creative drag queens captured from the 1990s through to the present are a rare witness to the underbelly of modern Japan. This is a passionate and intimate portrayal of the genre-bending performers as they cavort, both on and off the stage. Glitter, glamour, sequins and seediness are all on display, up-close and unrestrained.

Author Bio

Tomoaki Hata is a photographer working primarily in Los Angeles and Tokyo. With more than ten years of education in law, sociology, media studies, cultural studies, and art criticism in Japan, Hata started his career as a photographer in 1996, shooting Japan's groundbreaking HIV/AIDS benefit dance parties as well as Japan's gay porn industry. Hata's photography is part of Collection Lambert in Avignon, France and is included in other private collections worldwide. Eric C. Shiner is the Milton Fine Curator of Art at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and an adjunct professor in the History of Art and Architecture department at the University of Pittsburgh. Shiner was an assistant curator of the Yokohama Triennale 2001, Japan's first-ever, large-scale exhibition of international contemporary art, and the curator of Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York at Japan Society in 2007. He is an active writer and translator, and a contributing editor for ArtAsiaPacific magazine. Simone Fukayuki is a chansonnier, party organizer, stage director, columnist, and is deeply fond of bizarreries, Eros, and futile love. Performing as a drag queen since the 1980s, Fukayuki has used deus ex machina, and the themes of authentic romanticism and anti-realism to profoundly affect audiences across Japan.