Between June 28 and August 27, 2017, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie presents the exhibition Memory and Light: Japanese Photography 1950–2000, featuring a collection of photographs donated by Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. In connection with the exhibition, the MEP library showcases a selection of Japanese photobooks.
The library’s collection of Japanese books, assembled with the help of Kaze Kuramochi, currently includes over 1,300 works, most of which have not been on sale in France.
Postwar Japan had no museums or any major specialized galleries; and books, magazines, and journals, that is the printed page, were the only way for photographers to show their work. In the Japanese mindset, the impact of a book or a journal—and thus a structured series of images making it possible to understand a body of work centered on a given subject takes precedence over an exhibition featuring a handful of images. The impact of a work cannot be fully understood if images are isolated, since this dilutes the intention of the photographer: the relationship established by the very succession of images is severed.
