China Underground > Events > SHOJI UEDA RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION(XIAMEN)

SHOJI UEDA RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION(XIAMEN)

Date/Time
Date(s) - 31/08/2019 - 10/11/2019
10:00 am - 6:00 pm

Location
Three Shadows Xiamen Photography Art Centre

Location Address No. 301, Building 2, Xinglinwan Business Center, Jimei District

City Xiamen

Country/State

Categories


It is Three Shadows Xiamen Photography ArtCentre’s honor to present the first extended retrospective exhibition of Shoji Ueda in Xiamen, China, featuring 141 early and late works ranging from his masterful series Sand Dunes to the fashion photographs that helped trigger a reappraisal of his achievements.

SHOJI UEDA RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITIONXIAMEN
31 AUGUST – 10 OCTOBER 2019

Organizer: Three Shadows Xiamen Photography Art Centre
Co-organizer: Shoji Ueda Office
Art Directors: RongRong&Inri
Curator: Masako Sato
Opening: 15:00, August 31,2019
Talk: 16:00, August 31,2019
DurationAugust 31, 2019 -November 10, 2019 Closed on Mondays
Location: Three Shadows XiamenPhotography Art Centre
(No. 301, Building 2, Xinlinwan Business Center, JimeiDistrict, Xiamen)

Kako与花,1949 - Kako and a Flower (1949), Image ©Shoji Ueda Office
Kako与花,1949 – Kako and a Flower (1949), Image ©Shoji Ueda Office

妻子在的沙丘风景,1950 - Scenery of the dune with my wife (1950), Image ©Shoji Ueda Office
妻子在的沙丘风景,1950 – Scenery of the dune with my wife (1950), Image ©Shoji Ueda Office

Shoji Ueda (1913-2000), well known for his iconic pictures taken around his hometown Tottori, would ultimately leave a major mark on the history of photography is not only his home country but also abroad. And he did it by remaining in his hometown Sanin, pursuing whatever imaginative ideas pleased him and never aligning himself with any particular movement, even as realism began to take center stage in mainstream Japanese photography. His strain of modernism was so distinct that the “Ueda-cho (Uedastyle)” still generates fresh acclaim to this day.

稻草人,1950 - Bird scarer (1950), Image ©Shoji Ueda Office
稻草人,1950 – Bird scarer (1950), Image ©Shoji Ueda Office

Influenced by the Western avant-garde during his adolescence, Ueda maintained the passionate, uninhibited spirit of an amateur while he ran his own studio. His intricate compositions – prime examples of staged photography – often featured his family and his close friends in his neighboring sand dunes arranged like chess pieces. The worlds he managed to express within the constraints of commercial and fashion photography remain both surprising and deeply moving, as typified by Mode in Dunes, a project he undertook at the age of 70.

选自《小传记》,1975 - From Little biography (1975), Image ©Shoji Ueda Office
选自《小传记》,1975 – From Little biography (1975), Image ©Shoji Ueda Office

“Awake or asleep, I always found myself thinking about photography.”

– Shoji Ueda

选自《白风》系列,1981 - From the series White wind (1981), Image ©Shoji Ueda Office
选自《白风》系列,1981 – From the series White wind (1981), Image ©Shoji Ueda Office

Shoji Ueda was born in 1913 in Tottori Prefecture, Japan and started his career as a photographer by establishing a studio at his hometown in the 1930s. He cemented his reputation with intricately staged photographs in the Tottori sand dunes before tilting toward srealism during the 1950s and continuing to garner acclaim with photo books like Children the Year Around, published in 1971. 1972, when he first traveled to Europe and published Oto no nai kioku, marked a turning point in his international reputation. He was subsequently invited to participate in Les Rencontres d’Arles in 1978 and 1987. His works are highly regarded abroad and he has steadily built a reputation among European collectors and critics in particular. In 1996, he received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France. Ueda died at 87 in 2000. In 2013, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum held “100 Years of Birth! Shoji Ueda,” a large retrospective.

选自《白风》系列,1981 - From the series White Wind, Image ©Shoji Ueda Office
选自《白风》系列,1981 – From the series White Wind, Image ©Shoji Ueda Office

选自《沙丘》系列,1983,- From the series Dune (1983), Image ©Shoji Ueda Office
选自《沙丘》系列,1983,- From the series Dune (1983), Image ©Shoji Ueda Office

 

GITANES, 1992, Image ©Shoji Ueda Office
GITANES, 1992, Image ©Shoji Ueda Office

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