Artist
Issei SUDA
須田一政
Born 1940 in Tokyo. Graduated from the Tokyo College of Photography in 1962. Was hired as house photographer for Shuji Terayama’s experimental theater troupe Tenjo Sajiki in ’67, before commencing his work as a freelance photographer in ‘71. A Newcomer's Award from the Photographic Society of Japan for Fushi Kaden catapulted him into the limelight in 1976. He further received the Photographic Society of Japan’s Annual Award for the exhibition of the “Monogusa Syui” series in 1983, followed in ’85 by the 1st Domestic Photography Award at Higashikawa for “Nichijo no danpen”. In 1997, his book Human Memory received several awards including the Domon Ken Prize. In 2013, his large-scale retrospective exhibition “Nagi no hira – fragments of calm” was shown at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. His works capturing moments between reality and non-reality have lately earned a high reputation also outside Japan. Main photo collections include Fushi Kaden (’78), Waga Tokyo 100 (’79), Akai hana – scarlet bloom (2000), Fushi Kaden (definitive edition, 2012), Anonymous Men and Women (’13) and Rei (’15)
Publication
MONOGUSA SHUI
This photo book is a complete version of Monogusa Shui that includes 48 works serialized in "NIPPON CAMERA" for two years from 1980, and 13 works exhibited in 1982.
Thinking up titles for photographs is a cumbersome process, and most of the time, a good title doesn’t easily spring to mind. In the case of my photographs, they don’t even have clearly defined themes, something like “problems of Japanese farmers” or “pollution-related diseases” for example, so long story short, titles aren’t really important to begin with. However, a photograph without a title is in a way like a person without a face, and in order to avoid that awkward situation, I usually rack my brains to come up with something. My work right now revolves around the idea to try and capture both humans and objects based on a perception that avoids emotions such as love/hate or joy/sorrow, and reduces them as much as possible to purely inorganic objects. While I don’t think this will produce any brilliant ideas or prime philosophies, I would like to try and see what comes out when I just look at things with no contemplation or supposition whatsoever. So the plan is to investigate into these kinds of things, whereas the subjects should be as ordinary and commonplace as possible, anything that may lie around. I will pick up the pieces and make something of them.
– Issei Suda
Extract from the article “Kongetsu no kuchie” in NIPPON CAMERA, December 1980 issue