Modernist Japanese photography has been among the focus of several of Kicken Berlin’s exhibitions in recent years, including the 2013-2014 study of the international movement of subjektive fotografie (subjective photography) and its iterations in the Far East, South America, and elsewhere. German photographer and teacher Otto Steinert originally brought the movement to Japan in the mid-nineteen-fifties, where it fell on fertile ground. The photographers assembled here are largely not those included in typical Western compendia of Japanese photography. They constitute but a tiny fraction of a rich, creative photographic scene that was inspired and able to convey fresh and unseen imagery. Deeply rooted in the visible, the works transform the world at hand into an extraordinary aesthetic experience.
