© Estate of Shomei Tomatsu
Currently not on view
Untitled,
1969
Shōmei Tomatsu 東松照明, 1930–2012, born Nagoya, Japan; died Naha, Japan; active Tokyo, Japan, and Nagasaki, Japan
2002-148
A self-taught photographer, Tomatsu became one of the most important Japanese photographers of the postwar era, known for the exaggerated contrast of his prints. His earliest photographs addressed the effects of the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II as well as the continuing collision of Eastern and Western cultures. His series Eros from 1969 records the turbulent cultural changes Japanese youth were experiencing at the time, and the images often seem to be charged with both eroticism and aggression. This photograph appeared in Tomatsu’s book Oh! Shinjuku, which chronicles the rise of Bohemianism in Tokyo.
Information
Title
Untitled
Dates
1969
Maker
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 29.3 x 39.8 cm. (11 9/16 x 15 11/16 in.)
sheet: 40.9 x 50.7 cm. (16 1/8 x 19 15/16 in.)
Credit Line
The Peter C. Bunnell Collection, gift of the artist
Object Number
2002-148
Place Made
Asia, Japan, Tokyo
Inscription
Dated and signed in graphite, verso lower right: 1969 Tom
Culture
Techniques
Subject
- Shomei Tomatsu, Oo! Shinjuku (Tokyo: Shaken, 1969).
- Mark Holborn, Black Sun: The Eyes of Four (New York: Aperture, 1986).
- Shomei Tomatsu, Toki no shimajima (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1998).
- "Acquisitions of the Princeton University Art Museum 2002," Record of the Princeton University Art Museum 62 (2003): p. 107-161., p. 136
