Daniel Abbe / ダニエル・アビー

Next week, I’ll be in New York for an overly brief time for some exciting events related to “At the Limits of the Gaze: Selected Writings by Takuma Nakahira.” Would be great to see you there. Flyers are in the slides, some links below. March 4: Bard College March 5: Japan Society /events/book-talk-and-signing-at-the-limits-of-the-gaze/ March 7: Artists’ Space /programs/takuma-nakahira-encounters

美術史家ダニエル・アビーが写真家、中平卓馬の批評文の現代性を論じ、科学史家ダナ・ハラウェイの論点との繋がりを見出す。⁠ ⁠ 全文はプロフィールのリンクから⁠ ⁠ 画像クレジット：⁠ 中平卓馬《サーキュレーション 日付、場所、行為》1971年⁠ 中平卓馬 Untitled, 2007年 《Documentary》より⁠ All photographs by Takuma Nakahira © Gen Nakahira, courtesy of Osiris

“At the Limits of the Gaze: Selected Writings by Takuma Nakahira,” a volume that Franz Prichard and I co-edited and co-translated, is published today from Aperture! I am proud to have worked on this project, which makes a wide range of Nakahira’s sharp and unorthodox writing on photography, art, media, and politics available in English for the first time. The essays were all written between 1970-1976, after Nakahira’s participation in the photography magazine Provoke. Along with dedicated support from Sawada Yōko of Osiris, and a range of editors at Aperture and beyond, we have had our nose to the grindstone with these essays over the past year. My view is biased, but I feel the texts are *singing*. Personally, I’m excited to see how the book moves through the world. Nakahira is already pretty well known as a photographer, so I think that people with some interest in Japanese photography—or critical photo theory along the lines of Allan Sekula or Ariella Azoulay— will find their way to it. All the same, Nakahira’s writing goes well beyond photography itself: cinema appears throughout, the essay “The Illusion Called Document” critiques mass media images through the experience of watching TV, and at every step, Nakahira is connecting the feelings or sensations of images to the politics of his time. In that sense especially, I think the essays speak to the present, and I hope that the volume will find an audience as wide as Nakahira’s own concerns. Bookshop.org link here: /p/books/at-the-limits-of-the-gaze-selected-writings-by-takuma-nakahira-takuma-nakahira/6fa198830b9e5529

I wrote a review [in Japanese] for @osaka_paperc of Kazumichi Komatsu's exhibition at Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka. While addressing the legacy of the 1970 Osaka Expo, this exhibition also pushed its audience to lie down. At times it felt like I was barking up a strange or wrong tree to talk seriously about lying down as some kind of meaningful, maybe even political statement. But now I realize that many others have already been thinking along these lines: the tangping movement in China, for one, and closer to home, die-ins for Palestine, and a performance given from bed. The exhibition closed months ago, but now that the 2025 Expo is about to start in Osaka, I feel it's good timing for this to be published. A huge thanks to Suzuki Ruriko for editing my writing! Link in plain text, for my fellow PC-based insta users: /on-site/review_osaka-directory-7_kazumichi-komatsu 大阪中之島美術館での小松千倫展のレビューを@osaka_paperc に寄せました。この展覧会は1970年万博をテーマにしました。それでも「横になった身体」なんてものの政治性を論じるようになり、自分でも大丈夫かなと思いながら書きましたが、結局世の中にはそのような考えを持つ人は意外とたくさんいることを気づきました。中国の寝そべり族、京都でのパレスチナのためのダイイン、そして布団の中のパフォーマンス… 展示はずいぶん前に終わりましたが、ニュー大阪万博が間もなく始まるので、このタイミングで寄稿するのも悪くないと思います。素晴らしい編集をしてくれた鈴木瑠理子さんに心から感謝します。 リンクは自分のウェブサイトにも貼ってあります。

日向あき子『ニュー・エロティシズム宣言』1970年 これより読みたい本は今ないかもしれない！ At the moment, there's probably no other book I want to read more than this one.

“Ahagon Shoko: Photography, Resistance, and Island People,” is an exhibit of photographs credited to Ahagon Shoko, who drove a movement of farmers on the island of Iejima in Okinawa to reclaim land that was seized by the United States military. I say “credited to” and not “taken by” because many of the photographs are obviously taken by other people. It’s unclear to me how much control Ahagon had over these photographs, and that uncertainty is just one aspect of why they still offer so much today, not just as elements of a fixed archive but as links to movements throughout Japan, and further on to Gaza. The show is up at the Kyoto Museum for World Peace at Ritsumeikan University until 12/22. 「阿波根昌鴻 写真と抵抗、そして島の人々」は、アメリカ軍に土地を奪われた伊江島の農民たちの土地闘争を主導した阿波根昌鴻にクレジットされた写真の展示である。いくつかの展示にまつわるトークを通じて伊江島の運動がいかに現在のものであるかが明確になった。それはの運動だけでも、日本の運動だけでもなく、ガザまで繋がる可能性もある。立命館大学国際平和ミュージアムで12月22日まで開催中！ちなみに、小原真史の鋭いタイトルは東松照明の批判も含まれている…

A small report from Beppu, where I participated in the 70th edition of Genjitsu (現実, @genjitsu_art ) as a guest. Genjitsu is a temporary exhibit that happens once a month under the train tracks by Beppu station. Anyone can come, put their work up somewhere, and then talk about it with whoever else shows up. It’s like a DIY crit, where people are testing things in earnest outside any institutional framework. The photos show: a dummy of a photobook about kabuki in Ōshikamura (!) shot by amateurs, an artist about to crash the Beppu Art Fair and hitchhike to the smoking area, an artist who is very late to the exhibit, livestreaming as performance art, a prototype of a cut glass cup with a mirror that reflects your own face, blurred and unblurred photographs, “harsh noise from Oita” Big thanks to @naoyuki.hata and @hashizumeaiko for the invitation!

[マナルさんの家族のための相談窓口を開きます] The first photo is from a recent trip I took to Iejima, an island located about 30 minutes away from the main island of Okinawa by ferry. I hope that by writing out a description of this photograph's gentle clouds, calming green grass in the foreground, and even horizon of the ocean, I can prevent the rest of my post from getting hidden. (Obviously, though, this photograph is deeply related to the rest of the content.) ガザ地区にいるマナルさん（@manar_ahmedd998 ）と仲良くなって、彼女とご家族を直接サポートするために「相談窓口」を開きます。詳細はスライドショーに書いてあります。質問などあれば、気軽に連絡をどうぞ。 I am opening up a donation-based "consultation desk" to support Manar (@manar_ahmedd998 ), who I have gotten to know over the past couple of months, and her family in Gaza. I expect that the main audience for this would be artists or photographers in Japan, but if you are interested in any kind of art historical or academic "consultation," please get in touch!

より良いKyotographieができると信じたくて、Tokyo Art Beatにレビューを載せてもらいました。今まで総括的な批評がなかったようなので、何か言わなければと思いました。時間があればぜひ読んでください。 I published a review of Kyotographie for Tokyo Art Beat, in Japanese. To sum up, this event lacks a clear sense of curatorial direction. It's strange to say, but this photography festival actually seems to take photography as an afterthought! This is unfortunate, and I am hoping for better in the future.

木下佳通代の作品は兵庫県立美術館で初めて見た気がする。簡単に言えば、「70年代のフォトコンセプチュアルイズム」に属する作品だったけど、その枠を遥かに超えるとも思った。なので今の中之島美術館での個展を楽しみにしていた。木下の写真作品はやっぱり非常に正確度にこだわり、思ったよりクールだった。今回、一番興味を引いたのが絵画だった。木下の最初の頃の絵、グリッドに沿って描いた作品が多い。どこかルールを守れなきゃという縛りが感じていた。だけど、写真作品を経て、短い人生の最後の頃、木下はもう一度絵を描くようになった。そこでも、グリッドは（必然的に？）顕ているけど、形が和らいでいる、溶けていく。久しぶりに抽象絵画をじっくり見た。埼玉近代美術館に巡回するらしいけど、作品の数が減るから、大阪で見たらおすすめ！ The solo exhibition of Kinoshita Kazuyo at the Nakanoshima Museum in Osaka is very good. I had seen some of Kinoshita’s photoconceptual works before, but it was exciting to see the development of her painting. Towards the end of her life, Kinoshita spent a good deal of time in Los Angeles…

Mood board for a talk I’m giving next week at Sophia University’s Institute of Comparative Culture on the 1970s, islands, space, and photographs of the above. Details below! "Nakahira Takuma's 'Amami' and the Disorientation of Yamato Space" 18:00-19:30, June 6, 2024 Room 301, 3F, Building 10, Sophia University No registration necessary / In person only

I wrote a short essay for the website of the Kiyoji Otsuji Photography Archive, in the collection of Musashino Art University Museum & Library. Over the course of a long career, Otsuji moved through art and photography in an eccentric way, not just as a photographer but as a writer and teacher. It would be impossible to account for everything Otsuji has ever done, so the essay tries to introduce his work in broad strokes. At the very least, I have always appreciated that Otsuji's photographs show just how little distance there really is between "the postwar” and “the prewar,” terms that are often treated as if they were leagues apart. Links in usual places—