Hiroh Kikai
Hiroh Kikai (鬼海 弘雄, Kikai Hiroo[n 1], 18 March 1945 – 19 October 2020) was a Japanese photographer best known within Japan for four series of monochrome photographs: scenes of buildings in and close to Tokyo, portraits of people in the Asakusa area of Tokyo, and rural and town life in India and Turkey.
Kikai was born in the village of Daigo (now part of Sagae, Yamagata Prefecture) on 18 March 1945 as the seventh and last child (and fifth son) of the family.
[4] He graduated from high school in 1963 and worked in Yamagata for a year, and then went to Hosei University in Tokyo to study philosophy.
[7] Meanwhile, he stayed in touch with his philosophy professor from his university days, Sadayoshi Fukuda, whose interests extended to writing a regular column for the magazine Camera Mainichi; he introduced Kikai to its editor, Shōji Yamagishi, who showed him photographs by Diane Arbus that made a great impact on Kikai.
At that time (when somebody fresh out of university could expect to earn ¥40,000 per month), a Hasselblad SLR camera normally cost ¥600,000; Kikai heard of an opportunity to buy one for ¥320,000 and mentioned this to Fukuda, who immediately lent him the money, with no interest, and no date or pressure for repayment.
[12] But Kikai decided that in order to be a photographer he needed darkroom skills, and he returned to Tokyo to work at Doi Technical Photo (1973–76).
[15] Kikai's other long-term photographic projects are of working and residential neighborhoods in and near Tokyo, and of people and scenes in India and Turkey.
[18] In the early part of his career, Kikai often had to earn money in other ways: after three years' work in the darkroom, he returned to manual labor.
[19] Kikai taught for some time at Musashino Art University, but he was disappointed by the students' lack of sustained effort and therefore quit.
[21][22][23] Kikai had started his Asakusa series of square, monochrome portraits as early as 1973, but after this there was a hiatus until 1985, when he realized that an ideal backdrop would be the plain red walls of Sensō-ji.
[26] Though Kikai started to photograph in Asakusa simply because it was near where he then lived, he continued because of the nature of the place and its visitors.
[28] In 1995, a number of portraits from the series were shown together with the works of eleven other photographers in Tokyo/City of Photos, one of a pair of opening exhibitions for the purpose-made building of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.
Kikai's contribution to this exhibition was well received,[34] and Asakusa Portraits won praise for its photography and also (from Paul Smith) for the vernacular fashion of those photographed.
[36] When tired of waiting (or photographing) in Asakusa, he would walk as far as 20 km looking for urban scenes of interest where he could make "portraits of spaces".
Between a single nude in a shopfront display from 1978 and a very young boy photographed in December 2006 (the latter appearing to share the Sensō-ji backdrop of Persona), are square monochrome views of Tokyo and Kawasaki, compositions that seem casual and rather disorderly, mostly of unpeopled scenes showing signs of intensive and recent use.
[47] Shiawase / Shanti (2001) is a collection of photographs that concentrates on children, most of which were taken in Allahabad, Benares, Calcutta, Puri and Delhi in 2000.
[49] Wanting to explore somewhere that (in contrast to India) was cold, as well as a Muslim land where Asian and European cultures meet, in 1994 Kikai made the first of six visits to Turkey, where he stayed for a total of nine months.
