Seiji Kurata - Photographs & Helmut Newton: Provocateur London Thursday, May 16, 2024 | Phillips

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  • “What I want to do is, to observe them. I want to see as many persons as possible as precisely as possible…It is a must to keep tight the surface tension of the world.” 
    —Seiji Kurata

    During the summer of 1975, Japanese artist Seiji Kurata (1945-2020) began photographing the seedy streets of Ikebukuro in north-western Tokyo at night, using a medium-format camera (Asahi Pentax 6x7) and a strong strobe. Focusing on the underbelly of Japanese society, his subjects included yakuza, strippers, transvestites, prostitutes and their clients. Tattooed Man – the powerful and provocative photograph offered here – presents a heavily tattooed yakuza in his loincloth, with neck extended and samurai sword in hand, standing on a building rooftop. This captivating photograph was taken in October 1975 during Kurata’s first year of nightly adventures in the entertainment district of Ikebukuro where he encountered scenes he described as ‘whirlpools of excitement’. Writing in 2013, Kurata recalled his indelible encounter with the yakuza that resulted in this iconic photograph: 

     

    The town is bright with streetlights, pubs, game centres, cafes, restaurants, arrays of neon and spotlights. Two tall men call out to me. They look and act like playboys. 

      

    – Hey you, that’s a big camera, huh? I bet it takes good photos. Take one of us!  
    – Huh, black and white? Are you broke?  
    – What, don’t you even have colour?  
    – Not even a studio?  
    – Money! Sure, we’ll pay you. 

      

    As if following a script, they keep up their big talk. I try hard to break in, saying I can’t do it in the middle of a crowd of people, or that I might be caught by the police, but in the end, I promise to photograph them three days later. There are no nice landscapes, no skylines or good scenery, and we decide to make the top of a building our studio. On the emergency staircase the two play for ages with their swords like actors in a samurai film and tell me to make them look like [the actor] Ken Takakura. They also tell me to show them all the photos taken, and to make big prints of any that are good. 

      

    As the cover image of Kurata’s seminal photobook Flash Up: Street PhotoRandom Tokyo 1975-1979, Tattooed Man epitomised the raw and gritty underworld of 1970s Tokyo. In referring to his photographs taken in the 1970s, Kurata later remarked, ‘If you asked me to take these pictures today, I couldn’t. Those things that were previously hidden were all brought to the surface.’ In the present photograph, Kurata cuts through the darkness with his bright flash to reveal the pride and determination of his subject.  

     

    Kurata’s work resides in such prominent institutions as the Brooklyn Museum and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, both of which hold a modern print of Tattooed Man, as well as the International Center of Photography, New York.

     

    S. Kurata, Flash Up, Tokyo, Byakuya Shobō, 1980.
    • Condition Report

      Request Condition Report
    • Provenance

      Directly from the artist
      Phillips, London, Photographs, 18 May 2017, lot 39

    • Exhibited

      Tokyo Night Dwellers, Canon Photo Gallery Amsterdam, 3 - 24 March, 1978, this lot

      Street PhotoRandom Tokyo 1975-79, Nikon Salon Ginza, Tokyo, 6 - 11 November, 1979, another
      Japanese Contemporary Photography and its Origin, Comune di Bologna Galleria d'Arte Moderna, 28 January - 28 February 1979; Comune di Milano Ripartizione Cultura e Spettacolo Palazzo Reale, 22 March - 29 April 1979; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 6 June - 31 July 1979; I.C.A. London, 10 August - 16 September 1979, another
      Floods of Light: Flash Photography 1951-1981, The Photographers' Gallery, London, 10 December 1982 - 29 January 1983, another
      20 Year Anniversary TOP Collection: Tokyo Tokyo and TOKYO, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 22 November 2016 - 29 January 2017, another

    • Literature

      'Seiji Kurata SNAP-2 Ikebukuro', Camera Mainichi, January 1977, p. 84
      Reflextions, Amsterdam: Canon Photo Gallery, 3 March 1978, cover (crop)
      Flash Up: Street PhotoRandom Tokyo 1975-1979, Tokyo: Byakuya Shobō, 1980, cover & pl. 92
      Floods of Light: Flash Photography 1851-1981, London: The Photographers' Gallery, 1982, p. 71
      Beyond Japan: A Photo Theatre, London: Barbican, 1991, p. 14
      G. Badger & M. Parr, The Photobook: A History, Volume I, London: Phaidon, 2004, p. 305 (crop)
      Flash Up 2013, Tokyo: Zen Foto Gallery, 2013, pl. 68
      TOP Collection: Tokyo Tokyo and TOKYO, Tokyo: Case, 2016, pl. 33

16

入墨の男 [Irezumi no otoko] Tattooed Man from Flash Up

1975
Gelatin silver print, printed 1978.
Image: 53 x 42 cm (20 7/8 x 16 1/2 in.)
Sheet: 61.7 x 50.5 cm (24 1/4 x 19 7/8 in.)

Signed in rōmaji, dated and annotated ‘1975 taken’, ‘1978 printed’ and ‘池袋 文芸坐通りビル屋上’ [Ikebukuro, building rooftop on Bungeiza Street] in Japanese/English in pencil on the verso. 

Printed by Kurata in 1978 for his first-ever solo exhibition, the present work is one of only two signed early prints of this image in existence. The other print, printed in 1979 for another exhibition and similar in size, is held privately. Aside from the two signed early prints, only six early prints of this image – three small press prints and three exhibition proof prints – are known. All six prints are held by the artist's archive and are not intended for commercial sale.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£20,000 - 30,000 

Sold for £69,850

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Photographs & Helmut Newton: Provocateur

London Auction 16 May 2024