All posts filed under: Photography

Ryuichi Ishikawa in conversation with Christine Eyene

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Photo: Ryuichi Ishikawa, ZK.050 Naha, 2012. As part of his first exhibition in the UK, Japanese photographer Ryuichi Ishikawa will be in conversation with art historian and curator Christine Eyene. The discussion will address Ishikawa’s inspiration from diverse art forms, including music and dance, his early practice and more recent work, his gaze and multifaceted portraiture of his hometown of Okinawa, Japan’s southernmost islands. A slideshow illustrating the conversation will present Ishikawa’s early images, as well as videos dating from the time of his participation to Seiryu Shiba’s Ryukyu contemporary dance company, as a photographer and dancer. zkop: a blessing in disguise, Ryuichi Ishikawa’s exhibition at Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, is a selection from Okinawan Portraits (2010-2012) and A Grand Polyphony (2014), two publications that turned the young photographer into an instant sensation in Japan and earned him the prestigious Kimura Ihei Award in 2015. The appeal of Ishikawa’s works lies in the spontaneity and raw aesthetics with which he depicts life in Okinawa, more particularly alternative youth and underground cultures, and marginalised existence. Copies of his …

1968: The Fire of Ideas

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Lecture by Marcelo Brodsky Artist Marcelo Brodsky will discuss his recent artwork, 1968: The Fire of Ideas, a visual essay using archive material from the social movements of 1968. 1968 was the year the youth from around the world took to the streets to demand greater freedom and a more active participation in the political life and decision-making of their societies. Quite often these demands were met with violent State repression. To recapture the spirit of those times, Marcelo Brodsky researched various photography collections and visual archives around the world for three years. These photographs evoke the events in an emotional way. They contain details, stories, and reflections that make it possible to read and understand the demands of each time and place. Brodsky’s visual essay is complemented by his intervention on the photographs with colour, drawing, or text. Specific details of the context and circumstances are brought out, underlining the effervescence of the call for change. Marcelo Brodsky is a conceptual artist and Human Rights activist who uses photography to intervene in the ongoing debate …

Andreas Gursky

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Hayward Gallery reopens with the first major UK retrospective of the work of acclaimed German photographer Andreas Gursky. Known for his large-scale, often spectacular pictures that portray emblematic sites and scenes of the global economy and contemporary life, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant photographers of our time. Driven by an interest and insight into ‘the way that the world is constituted’, as well as what he describes as ‘the pure joy of seeing’, Gursky makes photographs that are not just depictions of places or situations, but reflections on the nature of image-making and the limits of human perception. Often taken from a high vantage point, these images make use of a ‘democratic’ perspective that gives equal importance to all elements of his highly detailed scenes. This exhibition features around 60 of the artist’s ground-breaking photographs from the early 1980s through to his most recent work, and includes some of his most iconic pictures such as Paris, Montparnasse (1993) and Rhine II (1999, remastered 2015). Andreas Gursky marks the beginning of the Hayward Gallery’s 50th anniversary …

Exhibition: Ryuichi Ishikawa

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Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix presents Japanese photographer Ryuichi Ishikawa’s first exhibition in the UK. “zkop: a blessing in disguise”, curated from Okinawan Portraits (2010-2012) and A Grand Polyphony (2014) – two publications that turned the young artist into an instant sensation in Japan and won him the prestigious Kimura Ihei Award in 2015 – showcases images of life in Okinawa, the southernmost isles of Japan, and the artist’s own local environment. The appeal of Ishikawa’s works lies in the power of his images: straightforward, no-nonsense capturing of real, tangible sections of today’s society. They serve as an anti-thesis to the recent trend of increasingly sophisticated conceptual imagery not only in Japanese photography but also in other media. They are a compelling reminder of the power of raw images and reflect the artist’s words: ‘Reality is always excessive’ (artist’s postscript to A Grand Polyphony). Every image in the show, each of which a snapshot of reality, is loaded with emotion, drama, and sometimes, with the mere fact of being or not being. Ryuichi Ishikawa zkop: a blessing …