Shoji Ueda

[clay]

Gemma De Santos loaned me a book the other day from the gallery of a Japanese photographer named Shoji Ueda. He lived from 1913-2000, and I have to say that his work is very interesting. His career spanned the late pictorial movement to the high modernism of the 40s-60's, and he was still making photos in the mid to late 80's. What I find fascinating in his work is that he was doing stuff that looks incredibly up-to-date in style back in the 30's! If you can track down any books or online references to his work, it is worth a look.

 

[jmdavis]

http://www.kishimoto.net/site/page/ueda/english/

This has some of his work in differing styles.

 

[Struan Gray]

A favourite among a mixed bag of Japanese photographers I saw in a large travelling exhibition here in Sweden a few years back. The pictures of his family on the beach were quite an inspiration for me, trying to combine serious photographic aspirations with being a good dad.

 

[firecracker]

Gemma De Santos loaned me a book the other day from the gallery of a Japanese photographer named Shoji Ueda. He lived from 1913-2000, and I have to say that his work is very interesting. His career spanned the late pictorial movement to the high modernism of the 40s-60's, and he was still making photos in the mid to late 80's. What I find fascinating in his work is that he was doing stuff that looks incredibly up-to-date in style back in the 30's! If you can track down any books or online references to his work, it is worth a look.

I read in an article that although Ueda owned a local photo business/shop, he stayed out of the commercial photography circle and managed to keep practicing amateurism in his photography.

According to a curator who spoke in this interview, Ueda had seen some photographs from some European magazine(s) earlier in his career, but that didn't influence him so much in terms of developing and creating his own style. Instead he took the western attitude towards art and photography and applied it to his personal work.

 

[clay]

Well, it is obvious that he was exposed to Magritte somewhere along the line. Umbrellas, bowler hats and stiff awkward men in the middle of nowhere pop up with great frequency in the book. But it is a lot of fun to see, especially if you think about what his American and European contemporaries were doing at the same time.

 

[kunihiko]

A show of his work is on at Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.
http://www.syabi.com/
I'm going to be there this week end.