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  ©Kozo Miyoshi

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  ©Kozo Miyoshi

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  ©Kozo Miyoshi

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  ©Kozo Miyoshi

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  ©Kozo Miyoshi

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  ©Kozo Miyoshi

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  ©Kozo Miyoshi

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  ©Kozo Miyoshi

【Winter Holidays Notice】

[PGI Gallery]

We will be closed from December 26, 2024 to January 7, 2025 for the winter holidays.

Kozo Miyoshi (b. 1947) began his career as a photographer in the 1970s. After switching to an 8×10-inch large-format camera in 1981, Miyoshi spent the 1980s creating several series on the quintessential Japanese landscape and its people, including Innocents (1985), Picture Show (1987), and Conservatory(1989). In the 1990s, Miyoshi spent five years in Tucson, Arizona, producing series such as Chapel(1993), Southwest (1994), Airfield (1995), Cacti (1995), and In the Road (1997), whose detailed, meticulously photographed images capture an almost palpable sense of time.

          After returning to Japan, Miyoshi continued to travel throughout the country, documenting his travels in photographic series such as Sakura (2009), Seagirt (2004), Tokyo Drive (2006), and Somewhere, Sometime (2007), and, after upgrading to a 16×20 ultra-large-format camera in 2009, Yubune (2012), Sabi (2013), Ringo (2015), and Mayu (2019).

          This exhibition, like Dig a Well (2022),  consists of works made during Kozo Miyoshi’s travels that have not previously been organized into a series. During his numerous journeys, each lasting from a week to a month, Miyoshi seeks out specific subjects such as cherry blossoms, apples, or festivals rooted in ancient traditions. Along the way, he also captures random encounters and chance meetings with strangers with his camera—unique experiences that Miyoshi preserves and cherishes as vital moments of his travels. The people captured in these photographs seem to reach into the unconscious depths of our memory, as if suddenly recalling a childhood dream.

          The exhibition features approximately xx works photographed with a 16×20 ultra-large format camera between 2008 and 2024, presented as contact prints.

Childhood

Here’s a story from the deeper pockets of my past.

On weekends, but not all weekends—in fact, I was then too young to know or care whether it was a weekday or a weekend. Every day was simply a day in and of itself. But on certain days, a traveling kamishibai storyteller would visit the grounds of the neighborhood Fudoh Temple, which was always deserted except for the two festivals that took place each year. We called the storyteller Old Man Thunder, although I’m not sure why. I seem to remember that storytellers in other towns announced their arrival to the children by clapping wooden blocks together, but Old Man Thunder used a taiko drum. Maybe that’s where the name came from. Children who had enough pocket money to buy a sembei cracker or mizuame candy on a bamboo stick—about five or ten yen—could come and sit and listen to his stories.

Yes, I believe the storyteller’s performances were paid events. More than his latest stories about Phantaman or his funny quiz shows, I was always intrigued by where he had come from and why he did this kind of work. In some way, he remained more mysterious to us than the television that would later appear in our lives. One thing that impressed me about him was that even though he charged for his show, he still allowed the children without pocket money to see and listen to his stories, albeit from a distance. There was no line drawn between the children, of course, but still a palpable separation.Young as I was, I loved the way he looked: his tattered straw hat and the wrinkled, sun-tanned face underneath. I had many heroes as I grew up. Old Man Thunder was, I think, the first of them all. Every now and then, I still find myself thinking about him.

Kozo Miyoshi

English translation by Robert Zetzsche

Kozo Miyoshi

Recent solo exhibitions include Dig a Well (PGI, 2024), SHASHIN (Canon Gallery S, 2021), On the Road Again & YUBUNE (BOOKS f3, 2020), SAKURA (PGI, 2020), MAYU (PGI, 2019), On the Road Again (PGI, 2017), RINGO (PGI, 2015), 1972～ (gallery 916, 2013), SABI (P.G.I., 2013), YUBUNE (P.G.I., 2012), SAKURA (1839 Contemporary Gallery, Taiwan, 2011), SEE SAW (P.G.I., 2010), SAKURA (P.G.I., 2009), Somewhere, Sometime (P.G.I., 2007), Tokyo Drive (P.G.I., 2006), Seagirt (P.G.I., 2004), SAKURA (P.G.I., 2003), CAMERA (P.G.I., 2002), Tokyo Street (P.G.I., 1999), In The Road (P.G.I., 1997).

Recent group exhibitions include New Old School 2 (AXIS Gallery, 2023), The Crystallization of Photographic Expression and Technique, FUJIFILM Photo Collection Special Exhibition (FUJIFILM SQUARE, 2023), Farewell Photography: The Hitachi Collection of Postwar Japanese Photographs: 1961-1989 (Phoenix Art Museum, USA, 2022), Longer Ways to Go (Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, USA, 2018 and Phoenix Art Museum, USA, 2017), In the Wake: Japanese Photographers Respond to 3-11 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA, 2015), The Spiritual World (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 2014), Reinventing Tokyo: Japan’s Largest City in the Artistic Imagination (Mead Art Museum, 2012) among others.