Endless Map – Invisible is the first major exhibition in France by photographer Kikuji Kawada, co-founder of the VIVO Collective agency and a leading figure in post-war Japanese photography.
Curated by Sayaka Takahashi of the PGI gallery in Tokyo, which represents the artist, this exhibition is an extension of the exhibition presented at the 2024 edition of the KYOTOGRAPHIE International Photography Festival.
In this year marking the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the exhibition Endless Map – Invisible brings together for the first time photographs from four of Kawada’s iconic series.
It traces six decades of Japanese history through the photographer’s uncompromising gaze, where layers of time and memory intertwine to form a theater of the world.
“These are images pervaded by reveries. I hadn’t intended them to form a whole, but by overlapping, they gave rise to metaphors specific to photography.” Kikuji Kawada (2025)
The Map (1959–1965) and Endless Map (2021)
Published in 1965, Chizu (The Map) revolutionized the history of photography, of which it is considered one of the greatest masterpieces. This work is a striking visual reflection on the collective trauma of the events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the twenty years of reconstruction that followed the war. In a sequence of dark, textured, and often abstract images, the ruins of the Genbaku Dome (the only building left standing near the site of the first atomic bomb explosion) mingle with images of objects symbolizing economic growth as well as more subjective visions.
Rich in political metaphors and narrative experiments on the memory of Japan’s defeat, this publication, conceived as a total work of art, redefined the form of the photobook by fusing image, graphic design, and poetic narrative in a radical and non-linear manner. By collaborating with designer Kohei Sugiura, Kawada transformed the book into not just a simple image medium, but a sensory architecture where each element—typography, sequence, layout—contributes to a dense, fragmented, almost labyrinthine reading.
Described by Martin Parr as “the Holy Grail of the Japanese photobook,” The Map has become a model of the photobook as a standalone work, where form is one with content. With its formal audacity and evocative power, this book profoundly influenced subsequent generations and remains an essential reference in the history of photographic publishing, alongside the publications of Robert Frank and William Klein. Moreover, its exploration of the expressive and subjective potential of photography, as well as its use of allusion as a means of expressing reality, mark a real break with traditional documentary photography of the time.
Following his habit of constantly renewing his perspective and revisiting his work, Kikuji Kawada returned to The Map during the Covid-19 pandemic. The result of experiments with new techniques and media, the resulting images, gathered under the title The Endless Map, are presented in the VAGUE exhibition space in dialogue with the original prints.
The Last Cosmology (1995)
During the decades marking Japan’s transition from the Shōwa era to the end of the millennium, Kikuji Kawada pursued a singular body of work, always marked by a tension between history and the invisible, between signs of the past and the mysteries of the cosmos. His series The Last Cosmology (1995) explores the sky as a theater of destiny and disaster. Produced primarily in the 1980s and 1990s, these images depict eclipses, clouds, and mysterious atmospheric phenomena as metaphors for a world in transition, haunted by the anxieties of the Cold War and the social upheavals of contemporary Japan. Kawada deploys a twilight and visionary photography, at the crossroads of science and foreboding.
Los Caprichos (1972 – Present)
Los Caprichos is inspired by a series of etchings of the same name by the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya. Produced during Japan’s period of economic growth, these photographs examine confinement and mental architecture through images of labyrinthine structures, corridors, gates, and symbolic prisons—spaces where the visible dissolves into the geometry of anguish and memory. The use of juxtaposition, visual rhythm, and suggestion rather than direct description are central to these photographs. Los Caprichos was first published in 1972 in Camera Mainichi, then exhibited in 1986 at the PGI gallery, and collected in 1998 in the book Théâtre du monde with Los Caprichos, La Dernière Cosmologie, and Car Maniac. It took shape over a long period of time as a body of work in its own right.
Vortex (2022)
Published as a book in 2022 and presented at KYOTOGRAPHIE 2024 as a video installation, Vortex brings together images from the large body of work the photographer regularly posts on his Instagram account. With these photographs, Kawada continues his exploration of abstraction and the vertigo of urban chaos, a common thread running through his practice since The Map, through which he expresses his sensitive and incisive view of his time. The images of whirlpools, vortices, and rotating matter convey a form of inner collapse and cosmic exploration. The gaze doesn’t focus anywhere: it’s drawn in. Kawada further explores an aesthetic of fragment, disorder, and trace, making photography an instrument of thought in the face of the instability of the world.
Kikuji Kawada, Endless Map – Invisible
Co-production Kyotographie & Sigma
Vague, Arles
July 7 – October 5 2025
