An Important Photography Show Not to Miss... Keizo Kitajima at Amador Gallery
OK.. My little MAO-ettes. For the new hot Fall Art Season, there are a ton of great new gallery shows around NYC. But for anyone interested in historic B&W or Japanese photography, one show not to overlook is the Keizo Kitajima show which opened last night at the Amador Gallery on 57th street.
The show is a full retrospective of this almost unknown in the US Japanese master's portrait work. MAO was particularly taken
to the cleaners by his earliest Tokyo series.
(photo #1, Keizo Kitajima,
TOKYO SHINJUKU 1979,
12" X 8 1/2" , gelatin silver print edition of 7)
So, now, only 28 years after the renegade days of Image Shop CAMP with Daido Moriyama where rooms became a giant collage with the works enlarged and developed on the walls using sponges and plastic sheeting (per photo #2) Keizo Kitajima finally has a Museum retrospective at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo,a new 874 page monograph (published by Rate Hole in Japan) and a full exhibition at the Amador Gallery in New York.
The Joy of Portraits
September 15 - November 7th
Amador Gallery at The Fuller Building - 41 East 57th street, 6th floor
In 1976 Keizo Kitajima made his impressive debut with photographs capturing Koza in Okinawa, a town near the US military base, in the period just after the end of the Vietnam War. Subsequently, he expanded his purview to include Tokyo, New York, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union, just as that nation was on the verge of collapse.
The Joy of Portraits, featuring portrait work from each of these series, presents the most complete picture to date of the extraordinary photographer Keizo Kitajima's work from 1975 - 1991, including many previously unseen images.
About time you gave Paul some love!
Posted by: Dan Cooney | September 16, 2009 at 05:44 PM