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Japan
Organized Panel Session
Japanese women have played central roles not only in the creation, distribution, and exhibition of photography, but also in its critical review and curated re-presentation. My recent work documents the rise of female critical voices in male-dominated spaces of Japanese photography criticism. I begin by tracing postwar Japanese photography’s positioning of women in four magazines: Foto Âto (1949—),Fotogurafi(1949—), Nihon Kamera(1950—), and Shashin no kyôshitsu(1951—). There, male photographers and critics offered commentary sometimes directed at women photographers, who were predominantly figured as amateur practitioners of fine art photography. I also identify the emerging space of female critical voices from the mid-1950s through the 1970s, often within the rubric of domestic “social issue” photography criticism. Yet, from the late 1980s, there has emerged a new “photo-écriture feminine” in conversation with overseas photographers as well as domestic gay male and women photographers. This writing rejected a categorical attachment to women’s work while relying upon a strategic breakdown of postwar distinctions between fine art and social issue/documentary photography. Looking at the careers of five female critics and curators—Mariko Takeuchi, Michiko Kasahara, and others, I argue that the rise of women’s photography and image criticism is linked to a refiguring of the role of photography within Japanese society and to a neoliberal privatization of the image, which that criticism often problematizes. Looking at the contexts of Japanese and international photography, my paper also incorporates results from extended interviews with women curators active today.
Jonathan Hall
ONE National Lesbian & Gay Archives