Edited by Matthew Witkovsky, Diane Dufour, Duncan Forbes, Walter Moser. Text by Yukio Lippit, Yuri Mitsuda. Interviews by Araki Nobuyoshi, Daido Moriyama, Eikoh Hosoe, Ryuichi Kaneko.
The short-lived Japanese magazine Provoke, founded in 1968, is nowadays recognized as a major contribution to postwar photography in Japan, featuring the country’s finest representatives of protest photography, vanguard fine art and critical theory in only three issues overall. The magazine's goal was to mirror the complexities of Japanese society and its art world of the 1960s, a decade shaped by the country’s first large-scale student protests. The movement yielded a wave of new books featuring innovative graphic design combined with photography: serialized imagery, gripping text-image combinations, dynamic cropping and the use of provocatively "poor" materials. The writings and images by Provoke's members—critic Koji Taki, poet Takahiko Okada, photographers Takuma Nakahira, Yakata Takanashi and Daido Moriyama—were suffused with the tactics developed by Japanese protest photographers such as Nobuyoshi Araki, Eikoh Hosoe and Shomei Tomatsu, who pointed at and criticized the mythologies of modern life. Provoke accompanies the first exhibition ever to be held on the magazine and its creators. Illuminating the various uses of photography in Japan at the time, the catalogue focuses on selected projects undertaken between 1960 and 1975 that offer a strongly interpretative account of currents in Japanese art and society at a moment of historical collapse and renewal.
Featured image is reproduced from Provoke: Between Protest and Performance.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Photo-Eye Blog
Adam Bell
Japanese photography is finally getting the recognition and scholarly treatment it deserves…the book offers incredible insight and access into this important period of the medium... Provoke: Between Protest and Performance deserves to be on the shelf of any serious scholar, critic or artist who cares about photography in the 20th century.
Cphmag.com
Joerg Colberg
In a nutshell, this essentially is the book we have all been waiting for: those who always wanted to know more about Provoke, and everybody else who is going to be in for a real photo history treat.
Dazed Digital
Sooanne Berner
Provoke’s visual language embraced movement and disorientation, rejecting prevailing modes of image-making in a society increasingly dominated by media artifice.
Spectrum Culture
Pat Padua
Provoke is an exciting piece of history, following a line from protest movement to aesthetic movement, and concluding with a section on avant-garde performance art.
Photo-Eye Blog, Best of 2016
Moises Saman
The photographic rebellion evident in the dynamism and experimentation of the Provoke collective offers an interesting contrast to the orderly stereotypes that has come to define post-war Japanese society.
BACK IN STOCK! The first printing of Steidl's exquisite, 680-page compilation of the ground-breaking black-and-white Japanese photography journal of the late 1960s sold out upon arrival. At last, a second shipment has arrived—perfectly timed for the current mood of post-election distress and protest. On many "Best of 2016" lists this holiday season, it is a book that "deserves to be on the shelf of any serious scholar, critic or artist who cares about photography in the 20th century," in the words of Adam Bell, writing for Photo-Eye. Founded by critic Koji Taki, poet Takahiko Okada, and photographers Takuma Nakahira, Yakata Takanashi and Daido Moriyama, it was published just three times over a period of nine months, yet it toppled artistic, political and social authority, obliterated traditional commercial photography and photojournalism and essentially changed postwar photography forever. Featured image, by Koji Taki, is from Provoke 3, 1969. continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 7.5 x 9.75 in. / 680 pgs / 600 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $75.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $99 ISBN: 9783958291003 PUBLISHER: Steidl AVAILABLE: 6/28/2016 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Provoke: Between Protest and Performance Photography in Japan 1960–1975
Published by Steidl. Edited by Matthew Witkovsky, Diane Dufour, Duncan Forbes, Walter Moser. Text by Yukio Lippit, Yuri Mitsuda. Interviews by Araki Nobuyoshi, Daido Moriyama, Eikoh Hosoe, Ryuichi Kaneko.
The short-lived Japanese magazine Provoke, founded in 1968, is nowadays recognized as a major contribution to postwar photography in Japan, featuring the country’s finest representatives of protest photography, vanguard fine art and critical theory in only three issues overall. The magazine's goal was to mirror the complexities of Japanese society and its art world of the 1960s, a decade shaped by the country’s first large-scale student protests. The movement yielded a wave of new books featuring innovative graphic design combined with photography: serialized imagery, gripping text-image combinations, dynamic cropping and the use of provocatively "poor" materials. The writings and images by Provoke's members—critic Koji Taki, poet Takahiko Okada, photographers Takuma Nakahira, Yakata Takanashi and Daido Moriyama—were suffused with the tactics developed by Japanese protest photographers such as Nobuyoshi Araki, Eikoh Hosoe and Shomei Tomatsu, who pointed at and criticized the mythologies of modern life. Provoke accompanies the first exhibition ever to be held on the magazine and its creators. Illuminating the various uses of photography in Japan at the time, the catalogue focuses on selected projects undertaken between 1960 and 1975 that offer a strongly interpretative account of currents in Japanese art and society at a moment of historical collapse and renewal.
