Book review: Hamaya, H., Yamamoto, K., Keller, J., Maddox, A., Iizawa, K., Kaneko, R., Reynolds, J. and Berland, D. (2013). Japan's modern divide: The photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto. Los Angeles, California: J. Paul Getty Museum.

Japan's modern divide presents the work of two photographers with differing techniques and objectives - one documentary, the other experimental art - practicing in a period when photographers were struggling to throw off the romantic, painterly style of pictorialism and define a new way forward for photographic practice.  Stuck at the literal edge of the world and reliant on ocean transport, Japan often lagged behind Europe and NA, where photographers had grappled with these issues many years earlier.  This period in Japan represented a brief flowering before the country's military ambitions resulted in persecution and cooptation of the country's arts communities.

The book's presentation is split evenly between Hamaya and Yamamoto, with approximately 100 pages of 50 plates and two essays devoted to each.  The opening essay presents both photographers in historical context.

1. Kotaro Iizawa:  The Early Works of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto
2. Jonathan M Reynolds:  Hiroshi Hamaya’s Snow Country:  A Return to Japan
3. Judith Keller:  The Locus of Sadness:  Protesting the New Japan
4. Ryuichi Kaneko:  The Position of Kansuke Yamamoto:  Reexamining Japan’s Modern Photography
5. John Solt (trans):  Five Poems by Kansuke Yamamoto
6. Amanda Maddox:  Disobedient Spirit:  Kansuke Yamamoto and His Engagement with Surrealism

Also included are selected chronologies of both photographers, bios of the essayists and editors,  and an index.

Somewhat surprisingly, since I didn't know much about them when I purchased this book, the interests of these two photographers seem to mirror my own.  On the one hand, I’m drawn to ethnographic, journalistic, documentary approaches exemplified here by Hayama in his work on Japanese villages and on Tokyo’s student demonstrations against the 1960 US security treaty.  On the other, I’m attracted to formalist approaches emphasizing color, line, form and texture, as can be found in some of Yamamoto’s work.  I’m far less interested in surrealist montage and other additive techniques, and much of Yamamoto’s work along these lines leaves me flat.

Japan's modern divide was winner of the 2013 Photo Book of the Year: Fine Art from American Photo. If you need an introductory text to Japanese photography, a better choice would be Tucker's The history of Japanese photography.

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Exhibit reviews:

• http://www.artpractical.com/review/japans_modern_divide/
• http://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/tap/7977573.0004.108/--pacific-rim-divide-of-japans-modern-divide?rgn=main;view=fulltext

Book review:

• http://blog.photoeye.com/2013/07/book-review-japans-modern-divide.html

Book preview:

• http://www.photoeye.com/BookteaseLight/bookteaselight.cfm?catalog=GM087

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