Shōmei Tōmatsu

was a Japanese photographer. He is known primarily for his images that depict the impact of World War II on Japan and the subsequent occupation of U.S. forces. As one of the leading postwar photographers, Tōmatsu is attributed with influencing the younger generations of photographers including those associated with the magazine Provoke (Takuma Nakahira and Daido Moriyama).
Biography.
Youth.
Tōmatsu was born in Nagoya in 1930. As an adolescent during World War II, he was mobilized to support Japan's war effort. Like many Japanese students his age, he was sent to work at a steel factory and underwent incessant conditioning intended to instill fear and hatred towards the British and Americans. Once the war ended and Allied troops took over numerous Japanese cities, Tōmatsu interacted with Americans firsthand and found that his preconceptions of them were not entirely salient. At the time Tōmatsu's contempt for the violence and crimes committed by these soldiers was complicated by individual acts of kindness he received from them – he simultaneously loved and hated their presence. These interactions, which he later described as among the most formative memories of his childhood, initiated his long-standing fixation on and feelings of ambivalence towards the subject of American soldiers.
Early career (1950s).
Tōmatsu embraced photography while an economics student at Aichi University. While still in university, his photographs were shown frequently in monthly amateur competitions by "Camera" magazine and received recognition from Ihei Kimura and Ken Domon. After graduating in 1954, he joined Iwanami Shashin Bunko, through an introduction made by Aichi University professor Mataroku Kumaza. Tōmatsu contributed photographs to the issues "Floods and the Japanese" (1954) and "Pottery Town, Seto Aichi" (1954). He stayed at Iwanami for two years before leaving to pursue freelance work.
In 1957, Tōmatsu participated in the exhibition "Eyes of Ten" where he displayed his series "Barde Children’s School"; he was featured in the exhibit twice more when it was held again in 1958 and 1959. After his third showing, Tōmatsu established the short-lived photography collective VIVO with fellow "Eyes of Ten" exhibitors; these other members included Eikoh Hosoe, Kikuji Kawada, Ikkō Narahara, Akira Satō, and Akira Tanno.
Towards the end of the 1950s, Tōmatsu began photographing Japanese towns with major American bases, a project that would span over 10 years.
1960s.
Tōmatsu's artistic output and renown grew significantly during the 1960s, exemplified by his prolific engagements with many prominent Japanese photography magazines. He began the decade by publishing his images of U.S. bases in the magazines "Asahi Camera" and "Camera Mainichi" and his series "Home" in "Photo Art". In contrast to his earlier style which resembled traditional photojournalism, Tōmatsu was beginning to develop a highly expressionistic form of image taking that emphasized the photographer's own subjectivity. In response to this emergence, a dispute arose when Iwanami Shashin Bunko founder Yonosuke Natori wrote that Tōmatsu had betrayed his foundations as a photojournalist by neglecting the responsibility to present reality in a truthful and legible manner. He rejected the claim that he was ever a photojournalist, and admonished journalistic thinking as an impediment to photography. Both essays were published in "Asahi Camera". In addition to "Asahi Camera" and "Photo Art", Tōmatsu worked for magazines "Gendai no me" and "Camera Mainichi". For "Gendai no me", he edited a monthly series titled "I am King" (1964); for "Camera Mainichi", he printed multiple collaborations made with Yasuhiro Ishimoto and Shigeichi Nagano in 1965 and his own series, "The Sea Around Us" in 1966.
Nagasaki.
In 1960, Tōmatsu was commissioned to photograph Nagasaki by the Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (, abbrev. "Gensuikyō"), after the conference determined that visual images were necessary to show international audiences the effects of the atomic bomb. The following year, Tōmatsu was guided around Nagasaki, having the opportunity to speak with and photograph victims of the atomic bomb, also known as "hibakusha". Like many Japanese people at the time, Tōmatsu had only cursory knowledge about the devastation. He found that the shock of the hibakusha's appearance initially made photographing them extremely difficult. Tōmatsu's images of Nagasaki and its hibakusha were joined with Ken Domon's photographs of Hiroshima to create Tōmatsu's first critically acclaimed book "Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Document, 1961." In the same year, Tōmatsu was named Photographer of the Year by the Japan Photo Critics Association.
The subject of a recovering Nagasaki and its hibakusha were revisited at various points in Tōmatsu's career. He returned to Nagasaki on numerous occasions and released the book "&lt;11:02&gt; Nagasaki" in 1966. In an interview with Linda Hoaglund and in the revised introduction to his book "&lt;11:02&gt; Nagasaki", he spoke on the greater attention paid in this second book towards the impact of the atomic bomb on the Catholic community in Nagasaki, which greatly differed from the hibakusha in Hiroshima. His interest in Nagasaki's Catholic history was one component in his investigation of Nagasaki's development into a 20th-century city. Tōmatsu would move to Nagasaki in 1988.
Shaken.
After Tōmatsu's publisher Shashin Dōjinsha folded and &lt;"11:02&gt; Nagasaki" encountered unexpectedly poor sales, Tomatsu founded his own publishing company Shaken in 1967. Through Shaken, Tōmatsu published "Nippon" (1967), a collection of images from ten series that was initially meant to be split into three individual books; "Assalamu Alaykum" (1968), images taken from his 1963 trip in Afghanistan; and "Oh! Shinjuku" (1969), a mix of scenes from Shinjuku's energetic nightlife, intimate scenes of Butoh performer Hijikata Ankoku, and large scale student protests against the Vietnam War held by Zengakuren.
With his publishing company, Tōmatsu also conceived the cultural magazine "KEN." Each of the three issues was edited by a different artist: the first, second, and third edited by Yoshio Sawano, Masatoshi Naitō, and Tsunehisa Kimura respectively. "KEN" addressed concerns over a growing fascist tendency in Japan and expressed criticisms about the 1970 World Fair held in Osaka. Essays, both textual and visual, were contributed by Provoke members and other prominent Japanese photographers including Masahisa Fukase and Kazuo Kitai.
"A Century of Photography" exhibition.
Tōmatsu's early efforts to promote photography in his home country, such as the launch of VIVO or his work as a professor at Tama Art Academy (1965) and Tokyo Zokei University (1966–1973), led to his role as an exhibition organizer for the influential show, "Shashin hyakunen: Nihonjin ni yoru shashin hyōgen no rekishi" (, "A Century of Photography: A Historical Exhibition of Photographic Expression by the Japanese"). The exhibition was part of an initiative by the Japan Professional Photographers Society to construct a history of Japanese photography for the first time. It was co-organized with Takuma Nakahira and Kōji Taki and held at the Seibu department store in Ikebukuro in June.
1970s.
Okinawa.
Tōmatsu first went to Okinawa to photograph the American bases under the auspices of "Asahi Camera" in 1969. The images he captured formed the book "Okinawa, Okinawa Okinawa" which served as an explicit critique of the American air force. On the cover, an anti-base slogan verbalizing his disdain with the overwhelming U.S. presence in Okinawa reads: (The bases are not in Okinawa; Okinawa is in the bases). This sentiment was foreshadowed in Tōmatsu's earlier writings, like his 1964 essay for "Camera Manichi" in which he stated "it would not be strange to call [Japan] the State of Japan in the United States of America. That's how far America has penetrated inside Japan, how deeply it has plumbed our daily lives."
Tōmatsu visited Okinawa three more times before finally moving to Naha in 1972. While in Okinawa, he travelled to various remote islands including Iriomote and Hateruma; he spent seven months on Miyakojima where he organized a study group called “Miyako University” aimed at mentoring young Miyako residents. Combined with his images taken in Southeast Asia, Tōmatsu's photographs of Okinawa from the 1970s were shown in his prizewinning "Pencil of the Sun" (1975). Although he had come to Okinawa in order to witness its return to Japanese territory, "Pencil of the Sun" revealed a considerable shift away from the subject of military bases that he pursued throughout 1960s. He credited a diminishing interest in the American armed forces, in addition to the allure of Okinawa's brilliantly colored landscapes, for his adoption of color photography.
Return to mainland.
In 1974, Tōmatsu returned to Tokyo where he set up Workshop Photo School, an alternative two-year-long workshop (1974–76), with Eikoh Hosoe, Nobuyoshi Araki, Masahisa Fukase, Daidō Moriyama, and Noriaki Yokosuka; the school published the photo magazine "Workshop". Tomatsu's dedication to nurturing the photography community in Japan was also evidenced in his role as a juror for the "Southern Japan Photography Exhibition" and his membership in the Photographic Society of Japan's committee to create a national museum of photography. The efforts of this group led to the establishment of photography departments at major national museums, such as Yokohama Museum of Art and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, as well as the first photography museum in Japan, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.
Tōmatsu took part in his first major international show, "New Japanese Photography" (1974) at MoMA New York, alongside workshop members Hosoe, Moriyama, Fukase, and 11 other photographers. "New Japanese Photography" was the first survey of contemporary Japanese photographers undertaken outside of Japan. It traveled to eight other locations in the United States including the Denver Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Art, and Portland Art Museum.
By 1980, Tōmatsu published three more books: "Scarlet Dappled Flower" (1976) and "The Shining Wind" (1979) were composed of his images from Okinawa; and "Kingdom of Mud" (1978) featured his Afghanistan series printed earlier in "Assalamu Alaykum".
Late career (1980s and 1990s).
In the early 1980s, Tomatsu had his first international solo exhibition, "Shomei Tomatsu: Japan 1952-1981" shown at thirty venues over three years. He was also included in notable international group exhibitions regarding Japanese art: in 1985, he was one of the main artists in "Black Sun: The Eyes of Four" first shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford; in 1994, he was featured in the seminal show "Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky" at the Yokohama Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
"Sakura + Plastics".
Due to existing heart problems, Tōmatsu received heart bypass surgery in 1986 and moved to Chiba as part of his recovery.  While in Chiba, he roamed the beaches near his home and photographed the debris that washed up onto on the black sand shores; the resulting photo series was titled "Plastics". Around the same time, he developed his "Sakura" series which first featured in "Asahi Camera" (1983) then released as the book "Sakura Sakura Sakura" (1990). Tomatsu notes how his surgery shifted his interest in the question of survival and mortality, with "Plastics" and "Sakura" demonstrating his increasingly allusive approach towards these themes.
In 1992, the series was shown together in "Sakura + Plastics" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, making it the museum's first solo exhibition for a living Japanese artist.
Final years (2000–2012).
In the last decade of his career, Tōmatsu embarked on a new and comprehensive series of retrospectives, dividing his oeuvre into five "mandalas" of place. Each mandala was named after the area it was exhibited: Nagasaki Mandala (Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum, 2000); Okinawa Mandala (Urasoe Art Museum, 2002); Kyoto Mandala (Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art, 2003); Aichi Mandala (Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, 2006); and Tokyo Mandala (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 2007)
Tōmatsu also had a separate retrospective, "Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation", for the international museum circuit. "Skin of the Nation" was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and curated by Sandra S. Phillips and the photographer and writer Leo Rubinfien. The exhibition toured three countries and five venues from 2004 through 2006: Japan Society (New York); National Gallery of Canada, Corcoran Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Fotomuseum Winterthur.
In 2010 Tōmatsu moved to Okinawa permanently, where he held the final exhibition during his lifetime, "Tomatsu Shomei and Okinawa - Love Letter to the Sun" (2011). He succumbed to pneumonia on 14 December 2012 (although this was not publicly announced until January 2013).