http://tapreview.org/ Trans-Asia Photography Review http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.201 Sandra Matthews Spring 2012 Dear Readers, Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.202 Leslie Woodhouse Spring 2012 All images courtesy of the National Archive of Thailand unless otherwise noted. Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.203 Suryanandini Narain Spring 2012 So recites Subhamita Chaudhuri, from a poem by her paternal great-grandmother Lobonyabala Chaudhuri (b.1885). This account of conservative values surrounding child brides in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries contrasts with the story of Subhamita’s maternal grandmother Chobi Ghosh (b.1917) who was a keen sportswoman, played the violin and piano and had aspirations of entering the Civil Services after her marriage. In Nishtha Jain’s film “Family Album”, images of the lives of these women and others, found in photographic albums from Calcutta, are interpreted by their descendants. These photographic albums echo varied realities through the voices of their inheritors, women and men telling essentially women’s stories. Embedded within these are readings of male society in colonial Calcutta, as it occupied the external, public, non-domestic realms that women did not often enter. Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.204 Ayelet Zohar Spring 2012 Over the months of February and March 2012, Mao Ishikawa’s photography was on view at four different exhibition venues around Tokyo’s metropolitan area. First, Ishikawa’s one person show, “A Port Town Elegy” was on view at the Photographers’ Gallery in Shinjuku; just across the tracks on the Western part of Shinjuku town, Ishikawa took part in a group exhibition at Nikon Salon entitled Document! Express! Memory!, in which she showed her series “Fences: Okinawa”; a couple of weeks later Zen Foto Gallery chose to display Ishikawa’s “My View of the Japanese Flag” series, while the Yokohama Museum of Art had Ishikawa’s “Okinawa Soul” series on view. Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.205 Sabeena Gadihoke Spring 2012 Fig. 1: Homai Vyarawalla with her Speedgraphix Camera. Courtesy the Homai Vyarawalla Archive / Alkazi Collection of Photography Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.206 Claire Roberts Spring 2012 Winter in Beijing is ice cold and dry. Dusty winds blast the skin and, if you are lucky, cleanse the atmosphere to reveal a high blue sky. Over the course of seven days prior to this year’s Spring Festival, wind transformed the sky and, with it, people’s emotions, replacing thick grey smog with a marvellously clear atmosphere. From an eighth-story window I looked out across Beijing and was reminded of the remarkable geomantic design of the former imperial city, with its flat plain protected by mountains to the north and west, and by its Great Walls. Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.207 Mihoko Yamagata Spring 2012 Fig.1: Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894–1978). Eiko Yamazawa, mid-late 1920s. Toned gelatin silver photograph with graphite, 7 1/4 x 4 1/2 in. (18.4 x 11.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the estate of Consuelo Kanaga, 82.65.299. copyright transferred to Brooklyn Museum by the Estate of Wallace Putnam. Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.208 Eunhee Yang Spring 2012 The media constantly features young Korean pop singers in their glittering costumes and flamboyant postures. The nuclear family has taken over traditional four to six person families. So-called ‘Alpha girls’ excel in learning and leadership in junior and high schools, reshaping views about women. A large number of young women who have learned to develop themselves occupy government-sponsored jobs after taking state examinations which provide opportunities based on high scores rather than being based on sex or age. Self-confident, stylish and ambitious young women are at the core of low birth rates and are past the Confucian traditions that defined Korean society while boasting a rapid economic development relying on a well-educated, young labor force. Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.209 Jean Loh Spring 2012 She was born in 1984, yet has none of the unhealthy syndromes of the Chinese “post-80’s generation”. Yi SHEN works a day job as a journalist for the Dongfang Daily, probably the best newspaper in Shanghai. At night she walks around the city, goes to the cinema and writes poetry. This black & white (night & day) background is omnipresent in her photography. As a journalist she writes mostly about intellectuals, writers and movie directors. Just to give you an idea, a couple of months ago she wrote a piece about the closure of the Chelsea Hotel in New York, and recently she published an obituary of the Greek director Theo Angelopoulos. Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.210 Mika Kobayashi Spring 2012 In Japanese, the word “Ma” indicates in-between, both in temporal and spatial terms. In various idiomatic usages, it also means “pause”, “chance” and “timing”, in relation to gestures and daily customs. As an artistic idea, “Ma” has long been regarded as the basis of sensitivity that is embodied in traditional painting, architecture and music. In photographic expression, ‘Ma’ is understood as void, empty space between the subjects. Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.211 Intan Paramaditha Spring 2012 Reading Karen Strassler’s Refracted Visions is a journey to trace how “Indonesia” is imagined, questioned, and remade not through the main routes of nationalism—the official images and narratives produced by the state, whose investment in visual culture was especially lavish during the New Order period (1965–1998)—but rather through the roads taken by amateur photographers, owners of photo studios, student demonstrators, or ordinary Javanese women such as Ibu (Ms.) Soekilah, whose personal story opens the introduction of the book. Ibu Soekilah becomes a character whose “intimate artifacts” (3)—her photographs—appear in different chapters of the book and conflate with other visions of the nation. Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.212 Doris G. Bargen Spring 2012 The topic of this lavishly illustrated book about the first German expedition to Japan could hardly be more exciting. Written in German, English, and Japanese, it promises an explorer story similar to those about the great modern age of discovery. Although the Eulenburg Expedition of 1860–1861 cannot claim to be first in the mission to open up Japan to the West, it shares the risky goal of all explorers, even if it did not enter uncharted waters, fill in white spots on maps, or hoist flags at the poles or on the highest peaks. That goal is to discover, trade, and culturally engage with different peoples. No one summed up these goals—“explore, collect, measure, connect” (84)—better than Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), the influential German explorer who inspired the Eulenburg Expedition. Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.213 Maki Fukuoka Spring 2012 Karen M. Fraser’s Photography and Japan marks a welcome addition to the growing number of expositions on the history of photography in Japan. This introductory book is a part of Reaktion Books’ series Exposures, which includes twelve other titles related to photography. It is a series “designed to explore the rich history of the medium from thematic perspective.” Fraser selected the following topics for this book: “Representation and Identity,” “Visions of War,” and “Picturing the City.” Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.214 Sebastian Dobson Spring 2012 The appreciation of Japan has long been an important part of Boston’s cultural identity, and, as Professor Hight adeptly illustrates in her examination of the photographic collections of six visitors from New England to Japan in the first two decades of the Meiji Era (1868–1912), photographic documentation not only formed an important part of what they brought back with them but also reflected a shared desire to capture a Japan that was in danger of disappearing altogether in the wake of industrialization and Westernization. In the author’s memorable words, “photographs shaped the New Englanders’ vision of Japan before, during, and after their travels through the newly opened Asian nation.” The same could presumably be said of other Western visitors to Japan at this time, which gives this study wider appeal. Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.215 Raymond Lum Spring 2012 The art of photography and the applied science of medicine have much in common: intensive training, diligence, dedication, creativity, manipulation, anticipated results, even chemicals. Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.216 Raymond Lum Spring 2012 Chen Man: Works 2003–2010. Text by Liu Heung Shing & Karen Smith. Hong Kong: 3030 Press, 2010. 154 p. ISBN 9789889938420. Chen Man is a young Beijing-based photographer whose photos have appeared in Chinese and Western magazines, including Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire. From the publisher’s website: “Chen Man: Works 2003–2010 is the first survey of Chen Man’s career and spans the entire range of her work, from her earliest cover shoots to new, as-yet unpublished images. Articles by Karen Smith and Liu Heung-shing place the artist’s work in context and provide an insight into the artist’s working processes and inspiration [3030press.com/book/08/].” Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.217 Raymond Lum Spring 2012 The Harvard-Yenching Library holds the largest collection of books in East Asian languages in any academic institution outside of Asia. Its earliest photograph from East Asia actually predates the 1928 establishment of the library by almost four decades. In 1882 a group of Boston businessmen engaged in the China trade decided that Harvard should offer instruction in Chinese to prepare their successors for endeavors in China. Ko K’un-hua 戈昆化 (Ge Kunhua in pinyin Romanization) (Fig. 1) was recruited to come to Cambridge. Three studio portraits of him hang on the Library’s walls and another is held by the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0002.218 Spring 2012 Yamashiro Chikako (b. 1977, Okinawa) is a young artist who created a unique installation project, combining still photography as well as video-art, titled Chorus of Melodies (2010) and recently presented at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography annual show. Yamashiro’s project evokes different layers of reading of the situations presented through her images, including social, gendered and political relations, as well as reading of her project in relation to fundamental visual questions relating to photography theory and the concept of camouflage. In the social, gendered and political context, Yamashiro’s work evokes the exclusion of women, especially older women, from social discourses and active engagement in Japanese society. The women in her work are abandoned, left unseen, dislocated into the jungle, distanced from their original families and dwellings; in a metaphoric way, Yamashiro sees these women as an emblem of the invisibility of Okinawa (as well as other peripheral locations) which are excluded from mainstream Japanese political and social discourses. The women (and men) presented in her video works call the viewer’s attention to the bitter memories of the Pacific War and the atrocities of the Battle of Okinawa, later confronted by the wish of Japanese government and authorities to erase and deny their responsibility for the horrific events. Trans-Asia Photography Review 2 2