Posted by The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife (蛸と海女 (Tako to ama), is Hokusai’s most famous shunga picture. It depicts a young ama (literally ‘sea woman’, they were pearl divers, most of them girls) diver entwined sexually with a pair of octopuses.
True to his cultural heritage, Yoshihiro Tatsuki took the theme “girl with octopus” and created a photograph that is equally interesting.
This post is about Tatsuki. It is a ‘pastiche’ of images and words collected from the internet. There is no commercial aspect in this, and all sources are referenced accordingly.
Born 1937 in Tokushima. Graduated from the Tokyo Professional School of Photography (now Tokyo Polytechnic University) in 1958. Joined Adcenter as a photographer when the agency was first established, and went freelance in 1969. He has since been active in a wide range of areas such as advertising, magazines and publishing. In 1965, Camera Mainichi ran his Shitadashi tenshi (Angels with Tongues Sticking Out) series as a 56-page photo story. Composed by Makoto Wada, and with poems by Shuji Terayama and explanatory notes by Shinichi Kusamori, it was a bold editorial that received a great response, and came to be known as a “phenomenon in the history of postwar photography” still today. Photo books include Girl (1970), Private, Actress Mariko Kaga (’71), Momoe Yamaguchi’s autobiography Aoi Toki (Blue Time) (’80), My America (’82), Kazoku no shozo (Portrait of the Family) (’90), and Arifureta Keshiki / Paysages ordinaires (’07). (Source: Akio Nagasawa)
YoshihiroTatsuki. “Untitled (Girl in a Patterned Kimono Lying Down).”
“Yoshihiro Tatsuki’s interests in nature, ambiguity, & mortality are present in this image of a woman lying on a ground covered with fallen flower petals.”
Baltimore Museum of Arts
from the book “eves” (1970)
Nude (1970)
A Rhapsody in Black and White
Yoshihiro Tatsuki Photo Exhibition
A Rhapsody in Black and White
Yoshihiro Tatsuki Photo Exhibition
A Rhapsody in Black and White
Yoshihiro Tatsuki Photo Exhibition
A Rhapsody in Black and White
Yoshihiro Tatsuki Photo Exhibition
Source: Chanel Nexus Hall
Tatsuki was born into a family that operates an old and established portrait studio.He moved to Tokyo to attend Tokyo junior College of Photography (forerunner of Tokyo institute of Polytechnics, Tokyo Kogei Daigaku). While at the college,he exhibited photographs of his family at the Fuji Photo Salon,which had just opened at the time. After graduation,he began working as a photographer at Ad Center, where Seiichi Horiuchi worked as art director. Tatsuki’s name entered the limelight when he was just 26-years-old with the publication of A fallen angel, an astonishing 56-page feature of his photographs shot for Camera Mainichi. Since starting as a freelance photographer in 1969, he has worked on the frontlines of the advertising, magazine, publishing, and motion picture industries. He has published a particularly large number of works addressing female subjects. His best-known works include GIRL, EVES, Private Mariko Kaga, Aoi Toki, My America, and Portrait of Family.
From a presentation of the book.
From the book “A Fallen Angel”
“A Fallen Angel”
When we dream, no matter how strange the dream is, we are only carried along by it as a raft adrift on waves. Turn the pages of A Fallen Angel too as if you were a raft adrift on waves. Don’t think for a minute that the girl with the stars and stripes wrapped around her body straddling a broomstick in the manner of a witch is a critique of civilization. Be a spectator of dreams. Yoshihiro Tatsuki is a driver of dreams and at the same time a spectator as well. Therein lies the newness of this photograph collection. Of course, his photographs differ from the great number of subjective photographs and photographs of images that appeal to the heart of the photographer. Tatsuki tentatively abandons the sort of photograph that is not affected by the elastic force of literature and pictures, in other words the fascination of intuitive feeling (meaning) and composition that tends to fall easily into symbolism. And there is the myth that the essence of the photograph is to record and inform. More aptly, it is like the thoughts a mother holds in her heart. By abandoning intuitive feeling, Tatsuki also draws near to these thoughts (recordability). The photographs are not a group of good friends that tell a photo story. They may seem to be because they record a series of encounters of physical and psychological mechanisms that happen to one girl. This approach avoids the intentional. This concentrated encounter with nonsense is more a documentary than a story. However humorous and sorrowful the girl is, it isn’t her fault; it is a statement of accounts, the marks left by burns of 27-year-old Yoshihiro Tatsuki.
Commentary: Shinichi Kusamori
Source: “Yoshihiro Tatsuki Photograph Collection A Fallen Angel,” Camera Mainichi April 1965 issue
The author signing copies of his book
時代に応えた写真家たち / Through the Eyes of Time
SOLD OUT
Publisher/キャノンマーケティングジャパン
Published/2013
Format/ソフトカバー Pages/- Size/200*233*15
A collection of works by Yoshihiro Tachigi, one of the leading photographers in Japan after the war, “Photographers in Response to the Times / Through the Eyes of Time”. In the camera’s March 1965 issue of the magazine, the original masterpiece “Tungling Angel / A Fallen Angel” has been created with a special edition of 56 pages of special features, causing a sensation, but over 40 years, the new edition is released as a solo work collection. Yoshihiro Tachigi who is new to memory that was published. Here is a catalog photo collection of the works “Tiece of Cake” and “Wink and Blink” that were exhibited at the exhibition held to commemorate the 10th anniversary of “Canon Gallery S”. In addition to major works such as “Tungling Angel” and “Eve” from the early 1960’s, a total of 124 illustrations from the color snaps taken mainly in Japan in the 2010’s are included. It is a valuable book where you can enjoy the evolving sense and technology of Yoshihiro Tachiki, who was the central player in commercial photography in Japan after the war.
Source: Made in Wonder
Protruding Woman