Ueda Shoji Photo Album: 吹き抜ける风

The deceased Japanese photographer Ueda Shoji (Ueda Shoji) maintained an "eternal amateur spirit" throughout his life, as he said: "Whether I wake up or sleep, I only think about photography." Like a brisk and comfortable wind, his photography The work has absolute recognizability, perfect and free composition, and the director's approach also formed a huge contrast with the mainstream Japanese realism and documentary works at that time. Some people even created a word to refer to his unique photography style ——"UEDA-CHO (Ueda Tune)".

Born in Sakaiminato City, Tottori Prefecture in 1913, Ueda spent his whole life in this western coastal town; the rich stories of the local gods, the foreign culture near the military base, and the surrounding seaside and sand dunes are his continuous creative inspiration, running through this town. The photographic career of a master poser. He has been deeply interested in painting and photography since he was a child. At the age of sixteen, he received an imported German camera from his family, and was influenced by European avant-garde styles such as Bauhaus and Surrealism; After taking a three-month portrait photography course at the school), he returned to his hometown and established the "Ueda Photo Studio" in 1932.

Ueda is always driven by a kind of curiosity, likes to try and try to obtain all kinds of new things, and put them into the mirror in the form of photographic objects. He is preoccupied with taking pictures, and often leaves the business of taking care of the photo studio to his wife, while he rides his bicycle to find the next shooting location and model. Hometown and family are the themes throughout his life, while his wife and children are important partners involved in the creation; they pose in front of the camera, with the cumulus clouds, sand dunes, sea and horizon in the San'in area as the stage background, presenting a different Images with a sense of everyday life, such as the "Family" series in 1949. Ueda himself sometimes enters the picture, as if to suggest with a great sense of humor: he directs his world and at the same time roams around it. His works were mainly published in the photography magazine "CAMERA", which established his reputation as an amateur photographer rooted in the local area - "amateur" is not the opposite of "professional", but purely for the fun of taking pictures.

In 1983, the shock of his wife's death caused Ueda to put down his camera for a while. In order for him to return to photography, his son, who was the art director of advertising at the time, suggested that Ueda conduct a series of commercial cooperation with Japanese fashion brands, including fashion designer Takeo Kikuchi, and the well-known "Dune" series was born. References to surrealism were pushed to extremes, reverberating through fashion photography at the time, and remain bold and unrestrained today.

Ueda's works have been highly praised abroad, and are collected by well-known art institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Pompidou Center in Paris. He was also invited to participate in the 1978 and 1987 Arles Photography Festivals in France. In 1996, Ueda became the first photographer to be awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters Chevalier.

The photobook "Shoji Ueda Photo Album: 吹き抜ける风" contains a collection of important works of this Japanese photographer before his death at the age of 87, including his most famous series of images: 1949 "Domon Ken and Ishizu Ryosuke", 1950 "Sand Dune Landscape with a Wife" from 1955 to 1970 "Children's Calendar" and "Small Biography" from 1974, etc., were printed using special color technology UEDA GRAY to express the closest color scale to the original. Twenty years after Shoji Ueda's death, looking back at his works, a wave of modernity still strongly impacts today's photography concept; these images belong to both the past and the future, faithfully expressing the essence of his vision of the world.