Takuma Nakahira: At the Limits of the Gaze

The first English-language volume of Takuma Nakahiras influential writings on photography. Takuma Nakahira was a crucial figure within the history of Japanese photography, best known outside of Japan as a founding member of Provoke, the experimental magazine of photographs, essays, and poetry, first published in Tokyo in 1968. Through Provoke, Nakahira deepened his artistic and personal connection to Daido Moriyama, with whom he developed a signature style of harsh and grainy black-and-white photography. He would eventually break with this style, and over the course of his decades-long career, maintain an experimental approach to photography. And yet, beyond his photographic practice, Nakahira was also a committed critic, writing on a range of topics hardly limited to photography: art, film, journalism, radical politics, television, and jazz. As a whole, the essays offer insight into the evolution of Nakahiras thinking. As the curator Matthew S. Witkovsky notes, Nakahiras incisive writing cut apart standing views in literature, film, politics, and especially photography, and he published both articles and photographs at a feverish rate.