Shomei Tomatsu

de Leo Rubinfien, Sandra S. Phillips, John W. Dower, Shomei Tomatsu

"Born in 1930 in Nagoya, Japan, Shomei Tomatsu came of age during the devastation of World War II. As a teenager he defied air-raid sirens to watch B-29 bombers roaring overhead; in 1950, as a university student, he began to take his first photographs. Drawing deliberately on the legacy of Surrealism and the Western documentary tradition, the self-taught photographer quickly emerged as one of his generation's most sensitive observers of postwar Japan." "This catalogue - the first comprehensive publication on Tomatsu to appear in English - includes essays addressing his fifty-year career, his artistic influences, and his historical context. A selection of excerpts from Tomatsu's own writings, many of which have never appeared in English, offers an intimate encounter with the issues and themes addressed in his photographs."--BOOK JACKET.