This is a masterpiece by Toshio Shibata , one of Japan's leading photographers. This series was shot with a large 8x10 format camera, capturing civil engineering structures from all over Japan, including vast reclaimed land, gigantic dams, retaining walls and erosion control facilities built in mountainous areas. The precise depiction and distortion-free images that only a large format camera can provide vividly capture the texture of concrete and the feel of slopes.
The monochrome screens are constructed with a strong emphasis on horizontal and vertical lines, clearly presenting the relationship between the volume of man-made objects and the surrounding nature. Since the period of rapid economic growth, the infrastructure that has been spread across Japan's mountains and rivers has possessed well-balanced geometric forms, yet appears to be in a state of tension with nature. Shibata neither criticizes nor praises these structures, but instead quietly presents them with a keen sensitivity to the forms themselves.
The original title of this book was supposed to be "Scenery of Japan," but due to a typing error at the printing company, it was published as "Typical Japan." As a result, this title goes beyond individual fragments of landscapes and resonates as a term indicating the structural characteristics engraved into the Japanese land, that is, the "typical" landscape of modern Japan. In 1992, it won the 17th Kimura Ihei Photography Award. Edited by Yamagishi Kyoko, it is composed of illustrations taken in various locations from the 1980s to the early 1990s.
[Title] Typical Japanese
[Publisher] Asahi Shimbun
[Publication date] October 1992 First edition
[Number of pages] Unpaginated
[Size] Approx. 29 x 30 x 1.4 cm, 1080 g
[Format] Hardcover
[Language] Japanese
[Title reading] Nippon Tenkei
[Author/Editor, etc.] Toshio Shibata/Author
[printing]
[ISBN] 4-02-256508-X
[Condition] Used [4] Average to below average (slight tears and missing pages on the obi, slight stains on three sides)
[Accessories] Obi
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Toshio Shibata (1949-)
Born in Tokyo in 1949. Graduated from the Department of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts, majoring in oil painting, and completed his graduate studies at the same university.
In 1975, he received a scholarship from the Belgian Ministry of Education and enrolled in the photography department of the Royal Academy of Ghent in Ghent, where he began to take photographs in earnest. He returned to Japan in 1979.
He gained attention for his work capturing man-made structures in nature, such as dams, erosion control dams, and concrete retaining walls, all over Japan, using a large-format camera. Through meticulous monochrome prints and rigorous composition, he presented the structures and forms inherent in the landscape of modern Japan. In 1992, he won the 17th Kimura Ihei Photography Award for his photo book "Typical Japan." In the same year, his work was selected for "New Photography 8" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
He has exhibited both domestically and internationally, including a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 1997. Since the 2000s, he has expanded his range of expression by working with color works. In 2008, he held a large-scale solo exhibition, "Landscape," at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. In 2009, he received the Photographic Society of Japan Artist Award and the Higashikawa Domestic Artist Award.
His works are housed in major museums both in Japan and abroad, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Centre Pompidou, and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.
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