[another] praise of the shadows : the Japanese in the Spotlight at Musée Réattu Arles

By Thierry Maindrault

Arles, outside the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, remains one of the world’s sites for photographic creation. In season or out of season, the City throbs around, and with, Photography.

Cultural spaces have gradually invested in enhancing photography; but the first to do so with passion and conviction was unquestionably the venerable and inescapable Musée Réattu, in 1965.

It is therefore not surprising that this Arlesian  jewel  has in its archives a good number of exceptional images forgotten after an exhibition or quite simply offered by grateful authors.

In this 2021/2022 winter, the management of the Museum had the excellent idea of ​​hanging up on the picture rails the works of Japanese authors who had fallen asleep in storage.

It is a real pleasure to find the work of the last century, from the 70s and 80s, of all these creators who in photography who were searching between the said and the unsaid, between the dominant West and an Extreme Secular East. Between the confused richness of the creative emergences of this time and the ancestral graphic purity traumatized by the disasters and the horrors endured are imprinted in the gelatin. Kishin Shinoyama, Keiichi Tahara, Senji Taniuchi and Eichiro Sakata have challenged and left their mark on Japanese creations.

The exhibition was scheduled to end on February 27, 2022, it has been extended until May 15, 2022; This is great news, take advantage of it.

Thierry Maindrault

Musée Réattu
10 rue du Grand Prieuré
13200 Arles [France]
+ 33 4 90 49 37 58

exhibition until May 15, 2022
open from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 06 pm

http://www.museereattu.arles.fr