Fushikaden
Issei Suda
Issei Suda was a Japanese photographer. Born 1940 in Tokyo. He is one of the major figures of post-war Japanese photography. He combined an appreciation of Japanese customs with a sharp investigative eye. His first photobook Fushikaden catapulted him into the limelight. Lately his works earned a high reputation also outside Japan. He died at the age of 78 in 2019.
On the occasion of his first exhibition in France at the GwinZegal Art Centre Fushikaden is being reissued. It is his most emblematic book, first published in 1978. He traveled through Japan to photograph his compatriots and capture the changes in a country undergoing unprecedented growth.
After the Second World War and the American occupation a period of dazzling growth propelled Japan to become the world’s second-largest economic power in the world. The growth is accompanied by growing pains. Daily life is changing. The country is struggling with a major identity crisis, between deep-rooted tradition and the hysteria of modernity. Suda captures moments of daily life which sketch the encounter of the old world with the new.
At that time, the photographic history of Japan is written in nationally distributed photography magazines. The book Fushikaden originated also from work that had been serialized in photography magazines. Before being a book, Fushikaden, was published in issues of the magazine Camera Mainichi.
Several avant-garde movements coexisted at this time, like that carried by the magazine Provoke. Provoke promoted more expressive and experimental photographic forms: blur, grain, the brutal explosion of contrasts revealing the subjectivity of their authors and the difficulty of describing the paradoxes of modernity. Daido Moriyama is one of the prominent members of the Provoke movement. Issei Suda photographs in a more classical way. His photographs with precise framing, stripped of obvious graphic effects, show street scenes and portraits. He captures his contemporaries with poetry and humor.
Some of the photographs appear to have been taken at summer festivals where visitors wear traditional clothing to watch performances of music and processions. The most jarring photographs feature tightly cropped closeups of performers or observers. As a result, the context of the festival disappears. These photographs pull the photographs of street scenes into the same realm. Suddenly everyone is performing a role. The whole country becomes a strange play. We encounter a country that desperately wants to embrace all that is new while clinging on to its ancient traditions.
Fushikaden
Photographer: Issei Suda
Originally published in 1978 by Asahi Sonorama
Republished in 2012 by Akio Nagasawa Publishing
Republished in 2024 by Akio Nagasawa Publishing & GwinZegal
Softcover, 21 x 22 cm, 152 pages
Afterword by Issei Suda
Considered as one of the greatest photobooks of all time by Source Magazine.