Kikuji Kawada

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<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>A Ponytail & a Thunderbolts, Tokyo</em>, <span class="title_and_year_year">1992</span></div><div class="medium">Vintage silver gelatin print</div><div class="dimensions">60 x 60 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>The Last Sunrise of Showa Era-A, Tokyo</em>, <span class="title_and_year_year">1989</span></div><div class="medium">Period silver gelatin print</div><div class="dimensions">51 x 41 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>A Partial Eclipse</em>, <span class="title_and_year_year">1987</span></div><div class="medium">Vintage silver gelatin print, printed 1993</div><div class="dimensions">55.6 x 45.6 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>Die Ganze Stadt (1), Tokyo</em>, <span class="title_and_year_year">1996</span></div><div class="medium">Vintage silver gelatin print<br/> </div><div class="dimensions">50.5 x 40.5 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed, titled and dated on verso in pencil. Artist blind stamp on verso</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>Floating Fish and a Photographer, Los Caprichos</em>, <span class="title_and_year_year">1975</span></div><div class="medium">Vintage silver gelatin print</div><div class="dimensions">25.2 x 30.4 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Inscribed in pencil on verso with print details, dates and signature </div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>The Sun and Clouds, Tokyo, 1988</em></div><div class="medium">Vintage silver gelatin print</div><div class="dimensions">50.6 x 60.6 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso and artist blind stamp on recto</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>Jumbo Jet, Tokyo, Los Caprichos, 1978</em></div><div class="medium">Early silver gelatin print, printed 1986</div><div class="dimensions">27.8 x 35.5 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Title, date and print date on verso</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>Wedding Veil, Tokyo, Los Caprichos, 1986</em></div><div class="medium">Vintage silver gelatin print, printed 1986</div><div class="dimensions">28 x 35.4 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Inscribed in pencil on verso with series title, image title, print details, date and initials on verso</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>Lucky Strike</em></div><div class="medium">Period silver gelatin print, printed 1995</div><div class="dimensions">46 x 56 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed, titled in pencil on verso</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>Hinomaru. The Japanese National Flag</em>, <span class="title_and_year_year">1962</span></div><div class="medium">Silver gelatin print, printed by Kawada in 1995</div><div class="dimensions">36 x 46 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed and titled by the artist in pencil on verso</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>Living cultivation, Pony-Tail</em>, <span class="title_and_year_year">1987</span></div><div class="medium">Period silver gelatin print<br/> </div><div class="dimensions">55.6 x 45.6 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed, titled and dated on verso in pencil. Artist blind stamp on verso</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>The Sunset</em>, <span class="title_and_year_year">1992</span></div><div class="medium">Vintage silver gelatin print</div><div class="dimensions">55.5 x 45.5 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>Helio-Spot and a Helicopter, Tokyo</em>, <span class="title_and_year_year">1990</span></div><div class="medium">Period silver gelatin print</div><div class="dimensions">56 x 46 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed, titled and dated on verso in pencil</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>A crescent and TV aerial, Tokyo</em>, <span class="title_and_year_year">1988</span></div><div class="medium">Period silver gelatin print, printed early 1990s</div><div class="dimensions">55.6 x 45.7 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed, titled and dated on verso in pencil and artist blind stamp on verso</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>Glasshouse and Sky</em>, <span class="title_and_year_year">1981</span></div><div class="medium">Period silver gelatin print<br/> </div><div class="dimensions">55.5 x 45.5 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed, titled and dated on verso in pencil. Artist blind stamp on verso</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>Matira Point</em>, <span class="title_and_year_year">1994</span></div><div class="medium">Vintage silver gelatin print</div><div class="dimensions">60.5 x 50.7 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed, titled and dated on verso in pencil and artist blind stamp on verso</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>Woman of Sankt Pauli, from ‘Sei Naru Sekai - Sacre Atavism’, 1969</em></div><div class="medium">Vintage silver gelatin print</div><div class="dimensions">25 x 30.5 cm </div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed in pencil in English on verso. Titled in Japanese in pencil on verso.</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>Artificial Moon Trail, Tokyo</em>, <span class="title_and_year_year">1969</span></div><div class="medium">Silver gelatin print</div><div class="dimensions">35.5 x 27.9 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed in pencil on the verso by the artist</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>Moon trail, Tokyo</em>, <span class="title_and_year_year">1989</span></div><div class="medium">Vintage silver gelatin print</div><div class="dimensions">55.6 x 45.7 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>The last golden ring eclipse in Japan, Yomitanson, Okinawa, Japan</em>, <span class="title_and_year_year">1987 </span></div><div class="medium">Vintage silver gelatin print</div><div class="dimensions">51 x 41 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed titled and dated in pencil on verso</div>
<div class="artist"><strong>Kikuji Kawada</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>The Halo City</em>, <span class="title_and_year_year">1991</span></div><div class="medium">Vintage silver gelatin print</div><div class="dimensions">55.5 x 45.5 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso</div>
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Born in Ibaraki Prefecture in 1933, Kawada Kikuji rose to prominence on the strength of his poetic, symbolically charged photography. This diverse and prolific body of work may be seen as articulating Kawada’s evolving appraisal of Japanese national identity, and its historical trajectory in the turbulent post-war period.

 

As a co-founder of the VIVO collective in 1959, Kawada shared a creative vision of photography’s expressive, individualistic potential with other members including Hosoe Eikoh, Narahara Ikko, Tōmatsu Shōmei and Satō Akira. Kawada held his first solo exhibition in the year of VIVO’s formation, before exhibiting The Map (Chizu) in 1961 at Fuji Photo Salon in Tokyo. Today, The Map is recognized as one of the most important examples of Japan’s unique post-war photobook culture, incorporating text, abstracted surfaces, and fragmentary images to compose a complex and meditative elegy to pre-war Japan. It was recently cited by Martin Parr as 'the ultimate photobook-as-object'.

 

His most famous series, The Last Cosmology, was conceived during the last days of the Shōwa imperial reign in 1989. Kawada drew upon traditional divination practises, observing the skies for astrological insight into the future, and using recently developed photographic technology to record his results in these dramatic, unexpected images of the moon. Kawada was particularly interested in engaging with abnormal and calamitous weather conditions which occurred during this period of heightened historical suspense, recording the impact of gales, cloud-patterns, electrical storms, and violent downpours on the night sky. Kawada's use of multiple exposures to document the passage of time through the changing faces of the moon illustrates both his technical acumen and his ongoing fascination with photography's capacity to capture traces of history.

 

Kawada has taught photography at Tama Art University in Tokyo since 1967. He was one of the fifteen artists selected by John Szarkowski and Yamagishi Shōji for the seminal exhibition New Japanese Photography (1974) at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2011, Kawada received a lifetime achievement award from the Photographic Society of Japan, underscoring his international and domestic acclaim, and he was honoured with a solo display at the Tate’s exhibition Conflict, Time, Photography (2014).

 

His work is held in the permanent collections of institutions including the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Japan, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, New York, the Centre Pompidou, and the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona.