Quick Facts
Biography
Kikuji Kawada (川田 喜久治, Kawada Kikuji, born 1933) is a Japanese photographer. He co-founded the Vivo photographic collective in 1959 with Akira Sato, Eikoh Hosoe, Ikko Narahara, Akira Tanno and Shomei Tomatsu. He was one of the fifteen artists selected for the “New Japanese Photography” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1974. He was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Photographic Society of Japan in 2011.
Life and work
Kawada's book Chizu (The Map) has been praised by critics. Brett Rogers, director of The Photographers' Gallery, London, has said it is a "deeply moving and highly original investigation into a seminal moment in Japanese history." In The Photobook: A History, Vol. 1, Martin Parr and Gerry Badger describe Chizu (The Map) as being amongst four books that "constitute photography's most significant memorials to the defining event in twentieth-century Japanese history" and that it is "the ultimate photobook-as-object, combining a typical Japanese attention to the art of refined packaging with hard-hitting photography, text and typography – a true photo-text piece. No photobook has been more successful in combining graphic design with complex photographic narrative." Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian, said it is "perhaps the most intricately designed and powerfully evocative Japanese photobook ever [ . . . ] By turns impressionistic and surreal, the book demands a degree of patient, silent contemplation that echoes the act of remembering."
Publications
- Chizu (地図) = The Map.
- Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, 1965. Text by Kenzaburō Ōe.
- Tōkyō-to Chōfu-shi: Getsuyōsha, 2005. ISBN 9784901477161. Text in Japanese and English.
- Tucson, AZ: Nazraeli Press, 2005. ISBN 9781590051238. Text in Japanese and English. Edition of 500 copies.
- Chizu (Reprint Edition). Tokyo: Akio Nagasawa, 2014. OCLC 951442394. With texts in English by Ōe, "Map," and Kawada, "On the re-reprint of "Chizu" (1965)". Edition of 600 copies.
- ''ラスト・コスモロジー = The Last Cosmology.
- ラスト・コスモロジー : 川田喜久治写真集 = The Last Cosmology : Photographs. Tōkyō: 491, 1995. OCLC 213343192
- The Last Cosmology. London: Mack, 2015. ISBN 9781910164235.
- Kikuji Kawada. Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten, 1998. ISBN 9784000083737. Text in Japanese.
- Japan, 1951-1960. Nazraeli Press Six by Six, set 5 v. 3. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2014. ISBN 9781590054024. Edition of 100 copies.
- Remote Past A Memoir 1951-1966. Tokyo: Case, 2016. With an afterword by Rei Matsuda, in Japanese and English. Edition of 1000 copies.
Awards
- Lifetime Achievement Award, Photographic Society of Japan awards.
Solo exhibitions
- Kikuji Kawada - The Last Cosmology, Michael Hoppen Gallery, London, 1 December 2014 – 23 January 2015.
Exhibitions with others
- 1957: Jūnin no me (10人の眼, Eyes of ten), Konishiroku Photo Gallery, Tokyo, May 1957. Organised by Tatsuo Fukushima.
- 1974: New Japanese Photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 27 March – 19 May 1974. Directed by John Szarkowski and Shoji Yamagishi.
- 2014: Chizu = The Map book, and The Map 1959–1965 installation of 90 photographs, were included in Conflict, Time, Photography, Tate Modern, London, 26 November 2014 – 15 March 2015; Museum Folkwang, Essen, 10 April – 5 July 2015; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden, Germany, 31 July – 25 October 2015.