Japan’s Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto
March 26–August 25, 2013
At the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center
"Born during the Taishō era, photographers Hiroshi Hamaya (1915–1999) and Kansuke Yamamoto (1914–1987) responded to Japan’s rapidly-changing sociopolitical climate in very different ways. While Hamaya focused inward toward rural life on the back coast of Japan, Yamamoto found inspiration in the art of European Surrealists. As the ebb and flow of Japan’s political, economic, and social structures persisted across the 20th century, Hamaya and Yamamoto continued to pursue divergent paths, thus embodying both sides of modern Japanese life: the traditional and the Western, the rural and the urban, the oriental and the occidental."
