This new touring exhibition, out of the ordinary/extraordinary: japanese contemporary photography, introduces the work of eleven Japanese photographers. These artists, with their different values and viewpoints, are confronting the complexity and indecipherability of an increasingly complicated world and attempting to come up with new forms of expression in the instability of Japanese society.
Sawada Tomoko dresses up in another woman’s outfit and poses in front of the camera in order to express the concept of individualism and how young women tend to be judged by exterior appearance alone.
A previous Tate Triennial’s exhibiting artist Yokomizo Shizuka takes a photograph of a person she has never met but who has agreed to take part in her project after having received a letter from the artist, with the greeting ‘Dear Stranger’ in which the person is asked to pose behind a window at an agreed time.
The exhibition contains more subtle, delicate messages that may be overlooked, but the younger generation of Japanese photographers definitely have the modern world in their sites, offer criticism and obviously intend to change the world, even if only slightly.