Issei Suda

Exhibition: Vintage Photographs 1970s and 80s

Dates: 03.11.2010 – 04.24.2010

Opening: 03.11.2010, 6-8pm

Higher Pictures presents the first United States solo exhibition by Japanese photographer Issei Suda. This exhibition consists of over twenty vintage photographs that date from 1971 through the 1980s primarily from Suda’s best-known monograph Fushi Kaden (1978) and includes works from Toyko 100, Human Memory and Minyo Sanga.

Suda’s complex portraits and street scenes reveal his intense interest in the mysterious side of everyday life and otherworldliness. His first notable book and exhibition Fushi Kaden “transmission of the flower of acting style” is a series based on the fifteenth-century treatise by Zeami on the principles of No theatre. Suda, a devout student of Zeami, translates the treatise in photographs that return to an emotional landscape that predates the rise of cities produced on his trips to remote locations in Japan from 1971 – 1978.
Often Suda’s photographs are suspended in time, either one moment too soon or too late, allowing for an unsettling effect on the viewer. Suda’s fascination continues in photographic scenes remembered from days past and preserved regardless of time. His diverse series include people who dressed up for village festivals, dreamlike landscapes and studies of pattern, texture and beauty.

Issei Suda was Born in Tokyo in 1940, Suda graduated from the Tokyo College of Photography in 1962. From 1967 to 1970 he worked as the cameraman of the theatrical group Tenjo Sajiki, under Shuji Terayama. He has worked as a freelance photographer since 1971. Suda is a professor at Osaka University of Arts. He has had over seventy solo exhibitions mostly in Japan and has produced numerous publications including Human Memory, (1996), Dog Nose,(1991), Issei Suda: My Tokyo 100, Nikkor Club,(1979), Fushi Kaden, (1978). He has recently exhibited at Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne, Germany.

For further information please contact Kim Bourus at 212.249.6100

References: Vartanian, Ivan and Kaneko, Ryuichi. Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s. Aperture. 2009. Willkes, Tucker, Anne. The History of Japanese Photography. Yale University Press, 2003