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  ©Kikuji Kawada

Kikuji Kawada‘s newest work “Eureka” is exhibited in October at Photo Gallery International.

Kawada, one of the representative photographers in the present-day Japan, is famed with his photographic world densely inhabited by symbolic images. His legendary book “The Map” (1959-1965) expresses with full of signs the memories of defeated Japanese in last World War II in impressive monochrome photographs. “Last Cosmology” produced in 1979 to 1997 is a revelation of celestial and atmospheric phenomena compounded with human affairs on a grand scale.

“Eureka” has been photographed in various cities since 1999. The work has been done on the total process of digital imaging from picture taking to processing and printing-out, which Kawada is positively utilizing in recent years.

Kawada reflects in the work intricate yet fantastic mars of images. He brakes the cities in fragments impromptu, and mixes them up to arrive at images in plural dimensions incorporating a new time axis and perspective. Revealing phenomena hidden in the society, he presents images suggestive of the future of mankind.

More than 40 digital inkjet prints in color are exhibited.

Kikuji Kawada

Born in Ibaraki, Japan in 1933. He joined Shinchosha in 1955. He became a freelance photographer and co-founded the VIVO collective in 1959 together with Eikoh Hosoe, Ikko Narahara, Shomei Tomatsu, Akira Sato and Akira Tanno.

In 1965 he released The Map, a groundbreaking photo book loaded with postwar political metaphor, and he continues to challenge our intellect with similarly fresh and clairvoyant images to this day. Kawada describes his work as “an expression of a specific scene in time and my relationship to it, framed accordingly, and the style born from the exchange.” These days Kawada can be found posting images and photographic musings to his Instagram account.

Exhibitions at PGI