Shomei Tomatsu 'Tokyo Mandala'
Shomei Tomatsu 'Tokyo Mandala', The World of Shomei Tomatsu
Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo 2007
Size: 30 x 22 cm
Pages: 192
Softcover
Language Japanese and English
Good condition
Tokyo Mandala : The World of Shomei Tomatsu is a catalog of Shomei Tomatsu’s restrospective exhibition held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in 2007. Photojournalistic images vary from people to landscapes and further to abstract views. Tomatsu is mostly known for his atomic bomb images of Nagasaki but as well for his postwar documentation representing Japan from his perspective, with his own words the true Japan.
"Each of the Mandala series consists of photographs I have selected after careful review of all the film I have shot in the regions of Japan where I have photographed extensively. The most extraordinarily difficult part of that process was selecting the photographs for Tokyo mandala. Having made the Tokyo area my base for about 40 years, from my 20s to my 60s, I was faced with a daunting problem of scale. The Tokyo area is huge, I have worked there for four decades, and thus had an overwhlmily large number of photographs from which I had to make a selection.”, artist’s forewords.
Tomatsu was born in 1930 in Aichi and moved to Tokyo after his graduation. His work has been presented in Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography as well as in USA and in Europe. The photographer’s main interests varied from military bases to nature, manners and customs.