TAKUMA NAKAHIRA

Nakahira Takuma (1938 - 2015), one of the most celebrated photographers to emerge from the Japanese “Provoke” movement, continually rethought and reinvented his photographic theory and praxis throughout his life.

Nakahira’s series Overflow was originally presented as an installation during the 1974 exhibition “Fifteen Photographers Today” (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo). The work consisted of 48 color photographs that were arranged on a wall 6 meters wide and 1.6 meters high. The photographs show fragments of an urban environment — eerie rifts in a space overflowing with objects, commodities and information — that Nakahira encountered and photographed in his everyday life, from vines creeping along walls and sewer covers in the streets to the tire of a large truck, from a pale-bellied shark floating in the transparent darkness behind the glass of an aquarium to close-up shots of a subway station. Franz K. Prichard remarks in his essay, which prefaces the Overflow book, “Overflow compels us as viewers to see the interplay of a seemingly random distribution of fragments, surfaces and residues. And in so doing, we are made to sense the undifferentiated enumeration of parts of an incomplete whole.” In 1977, Nakahira was tragically stricken with a sever disease that brought with it memory loss and aphasia, which greatly impacted his theory and practice. He returned to shooting the following year with the images he saw every day on the street: fire, water, birds, animals, trees, flowers, cars, cats and street people. This method reinforced his disembodied and unsentimental perspective on photography. These images are the ultimate presentation of his struggle to pursue the provocative questions disclosed in his writings and photography: the essence of photography is only an equivalent record. The expertly printed photographs, though intentionally devoid of pictorial aesthetic, possess Nakahira’s signature style and technique. Few works also feature the photographer’s personal notes, written on the back of the print.

“Nakahira Takuma: 1974 to 1989” will be on display at Each Modern from 23 July to 24 August 2019. The exhibition will also feature a special guest lecture from the director of Nakahira Takuma’s estate, Sawada Yoko, on 27 July at 3:00PM at Each Modern. On the gallery’s second floor, NITESHA BGTP - Book Gallery Taipei will be featuring a special selection of rare books to coincide with “Nakahira Takuma : 1974 to 1989.”

Nakahira’s work has been the subject of many museum exhibitions around the world, including “Nakahira Takuma: Degree Zero - Yokohama” (Solo, Yokohama Museum of Art, 2013), “Roppongi Crossing 2013: Out of Doubt” (Mori Museum, Tokyo, 2013), “Things: Rethinking Japanese Photography and Art in 1970s” (The National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, 2015), “For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968–1979” (The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and touring, 2015), “Japanese Photography from Postwar to Now” (SFMoMA, 2015), “Provoke: Photography in Japan between Protest and Performance, 196075” (Albertina, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Le Bal and The Art Institute of Chicago, 2016-2017) , “Nakahira Takuma：Circulation” (Solo, The Art Institute of Chicago, 2017). and “Nakahira Takuma (Solo, Hong Kong International Photo Festival, 2018). The remake of Overflow is realized with the support of HKIPF in 2018 and Case Publishing.