In the 19th century, Japan was only just starting to open its doors to the rest of the world. For centuries, the country had developed largely in isolation of western influences, creating a culture and societal unlike any other found elsewhere. In a time before World War and the rapid march of technology and progress [...]
In 1943, Ansel Adams (1902-1984), America’s best-known photographer, documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese Americans interned there during World War II. In “Suffering under a Great Injustice”: Ansel Adams’s Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar, the Prints and Photographs Division at the Library of Congress presents for the first time [...]
12 years ago, Miyoko Ihara started taking photographs of her grandmother, Misao. One day, her grandmother found an odd-eyed kitten in the shed. She named the cat “Fukumaru” in hope that the God of “fuku (good fortune)” would come and everything would be smoothed over like “maru (circle)”. Even though she is 87 years old, [...]
Anyone curious about the myriad and unpredictable ways that enormous success can translate into enormous influence need look no further than Tokyo in the summer of 1964. There, in the city’s dankest music clubs, a group of skinny, mop-topped Japanese rock and rollers were driving their fans wild playing the music — and borrowing the [...]
Christmas lights in Britain are gaudy, tacky, and a slightly strange symbol of Christmas – we’re pretty sure Jesus and Santa have more pressing concerns round this time of year than wrapping up a dead tree in fairy lights. But, in Japan, as always, when it comes to tech, they take things to the next [...]
Encyclopedia of Flowers is a visual exploration of the breathtaking floral arrangements by Makoto Azuma—encounters of unusual, sometimes exotic plants that wouldn’t typically occur in nature. With his meticulously composed photographs, Shunsuke Shiinoki exposes the flowers’ tenuous existence, their fragile forms, continuous metamorphoses, and inevitable decay. Click the pic to see more.
Japanese photographer Shinichi Maruyama is famed for his images of liquids suspended in mid air. This time round however, he’s examining the human form as it engages in movement. His series, “Nudes”, sees people moving in abstract ways across the photographer’s lens, which has been deliberately slowed down to reveal the energy and flow of [...]
Yu Yamuchi is an artist on a mission. For five months a year across four years, he lived in a hut a top Mount Fuji. Considered one of the most sacred mountains in the country, Mount Fuji has a great influence on Japanese history and culture. In a process that he considered a spiritual account [...]
Both “In Character” and out, the Geisha and Maiko were the models behind almost all Studio “Character Studies” and Portraits in old Meiji and early Taisho-era Japan. During the late Taisho era (1912-26), picture postcards of Takarazuka Girls and Movie Stars began competing with those of the Geisha, but the Geisha clung tight to their [...]
We love a good photo bomb here at Apowl. But we weren’t expecting the internet phenomenon to go all high brow. Art student Sari Yamagishi has politely asked groups of tourists in Tokyo if she can photobomb their holiday snaps, making it clear to them beforehand that she wants them to act as if she’s [...]
