Black Sun: The Eyes of Four, Roots and Innovation in Japanese Photography
High-quality illustrations provide a showcase for the divergent styles of four contemporary photographers, to accompany a traveling exhibition of their work. Eikoe Hosoe's images cine matically present a dancer acting out a demon myth in villages and rice fields. Shomei Tomatsu documents the effects of the 1945 Nagasaki atomic bomb ex plosion in shocking artistic composi tions. In Masahisa Fukase's pictures, crows inhabit the images of the volca nic Imami Islands. Daido Moriyama presents shadowy close-up and still-life abstractions from an urban environ ment. Each photographer's work is ac companied by an essay about the artist. Holborn's essays provide a very brief history of Japanese photography in the context of 20th century photographic aesthetics, tracing the roots of a style that evinces Japan's "terrible yet fertile experience." Recommended. Kath leen Collins, Library of CongressCopyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.