past exhibition

A Life with Camera - Yoshihiko Ueda

Weekdays 11:00 - 20:00

Weekends and Holidays 11:00 - 18:30

Mondays and Tuesdays Closed

Entrance Fee 800 yen for over 18

artist statment

A Life with Camera

and step towards taking yet unseen photos

In April 1982 I set out on my own path. I was 24, and in a total dreamworld.

The photos I took back then are in this book. Whenever I look at them, the scenes witnessed over 30 years ago come back to me with vivid clarity, at the same time reminding me of my gaze then. The gaze of a taciturn youth who comes up with myriad possibilities for snaring his prey, then gives up on most of them in the next instant, and battles with the time left to him while suppressing the frequent twinges of unease that surface from those discarded possibilities. At times it strikes me with renewed force just how strange and cruel a thing time can be. Even 30 or more years on, photos that stopped time are so raw you’d think they were taken yesterday. And I, looking at those photos, am a man of grey hairs and middle age, only my gaze that of a 24-year-old. Looking at the photos in this book I am reminded that photography is all about the gaze. Whatever I photograph, my own gaze is always reflected. Clumsy that gaze may be, yet I feel proud to have retained it, unaltered.And struck anew, forcefully,by the wonder, the beauty, and the cruelty of photography, because it stops time, capturing a certain person on a certain day, in a certain place, just as they were at that point; capturing with unbeatable clarity the gaze of the person who took the photo, their thoughts, in a piece of paper we call a photograph.

I’m thrilled to have encountered photography.And believe I’ve been fortunate to choose a life spent with photography. Obviously it hasn’t always been plain sailing. But if I had my time again, I’d still be a photographer. Through photographs I have encountered the world, and wonderful people from many countries. My gratitude to photography is enormous. Gazing on the gaze of my younger self, I determine to keep taking more and more photos, as long as I live.

Upon publishing A Life with Camera

biography

Yoshihiko Ueda

Photographer and professor of Tama Art University. Born in 1957 in Hyogo Prefecture. Recognition for his achievements include the Tokyo Art Directors Club Grand Prize, the New York Art Directors Club Photography Award, the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival Silver Lion for Graphic Design, the Asahi Advertising Award, and the Photographic Society of Japan Lifetime Achievement Award, among many others.

His most noted monographs are Quinault (Kyoto Shoin, 1993), a brooding meditation on the eponymous sacred Native American rainforest; Amagatsu (Korinsha, 1995), a backstage study of Sankai Juku dancer-choreographer Ushio Amagatsu; At Home (Littlemore, 2006), snapshot-like intimate glimpses of the artist’s family; Materia (Kyuryudo Art Publishing, 2012) an encounter with the primeval forest of Yakushima; and M.Ganges (Akaaka,916Press, 2014), capturing people at the Ganges River. Ueda’s works can be found in the collections of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City), New Mexico Arts (Santa Fe), Hermès International (Paris), Stichting Art & Theatre (Amsterdam), and Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris).

www.yoshihikoueda.com

overview

A Life with Camera
Yoshihiko Ueda

Date : 10 April - 27 December, 2015
Time : Weekdays 11:00 - 20:00 /
Weekends and Holidays 11:00 - 18:30
Closed : Mondays ( Except for Holidays)
Entrance Fee :
Adults 800 yen / College students or over the age of 60 500 yen / High school students 300 yen / Junior high school students or younger Free (Gallery916 & 916small)

Yoshihiko Ueda, the photographs For enquiries regarding
the purchase of the photographs, please contact the gallery.
TEL: +81-(3)-5403-9161 / FAX: +81-(3)-5403-9162
MAIL: mail[a]gallery916.com