EXHIBI­TIONS

TOKUKO USHIODA

Tokuko Ushioda embarked on her ongoing Bibliotheca / Landscapes of Books series in 1995 when she was captivated by the beauty of a single book and inspired to photograph books as objects. The fifth installment of the series features the Tamazato Collection, housed in the Kagoshima University Library, which Ushioda photographed from 2019 to 2021. The collection comprises some 18,900 volumes of historical East Asian texts that were passed down through the Tamazato branch of the powerful Shimazu clan, which ruled the Satsuma Domain in southern Kyushu for nearly 700 years from the Kamakura period (1185–1333) to the Meiji Restoration of 1868. All the photographs were taken using only the archive’s ambient light. Through a combination of monochromatic and color prints, Ushioda captures not only the quiet presence of the books but also the atmosphere of the storage space and the historical weight embedded in these materials.

PGI

A pioneer among Japanese commercial galleries specializing in photographic art, Photo Gallery International was established in Tokyo’s Toranomon district in 1979. The gallery adopted its current name, PGI, upon its move to Higashi-Azabu in 2015. PGI exhibits seminal photographers from the United States and beyond, including Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Harry Callahan, and Emmet Gowin. The gallery also works with masters of Japanese postwar photography like Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Kikuji Kawada, Ikko Narahara, and Eikoh Hosoe. PGI takes pride in partnerships with established artists such as Kozo Miyoshi, Michiko Kon, and Yoshihiko Ito that date back to the early days of their careers. Since 2003, the gallery has also discovered new talents, welcoming Shintaro Sato, Takashi Arai, Yuki Shimizu, Narumi Hiramoto, and many others to the program.