Teikō Shiotani
He portrayed landscapes, seascapes, priests at a local temple, his family, and other quotidian matters and scenes; his images at times unmediated, at others exploiting lens aberration or using darkroom effects.
Many prints made by Shiotani survive in museum collections, and since 2016 four photobooks largely or exclusively dedicated to his work have been published in Japan.
[3] Equipped with a simple meniscus lens, this folding camera used 127 film, a small format for the time, and was marketed as sufficiently compact to fit in a vest pocket and was popular in Japan.
The meniscus lens of the Vest Pocket Kodak did not permit detail, and photographers using it – notably Masataka Takayama, Jun Watanabe [ja], Makihiko Yamamoto [ja], Mitsugi Arima (有馬光城) and Kōyō Yasumoto (安本江陽)[8] – would often remove an aperture limiter from around its lens (fūdo hazushi),[1][3] thereby not only increasing the aperture by about two stops but also greatly softening the focus.
[9][10] Shiotani was attracted by the misty results and their resemblance to the works of a painter from Tottori whom he respected highly, Kanji Maeta [de; ja].
They had three sons, Sōnosuke (宗之助, b. June 1923), Reiji (玲二, November 1926 – March 1927) and Makoto (誠, August 1940 – September 1945); and two daughters, Yūko (優子, b. February 1930) and Yōko (陽子, b. July 1934).
[6] Shiotani's earliest known appearance in a major magazine was his Still life (Seibutsu), among contest winners in the January 1925 issue of Geijutsu Shashin Kenkyū [ja].
[3] In 1926, he won the first prize in the first contest ever run by Asahi Camera, with Fishing Village (Gyoson), a photograph of Takohana.
[3][n 7] From 1925 to 1927, Shiotani was also one of the key members of a group of photographers that in 1928 formally became the Japan Photography Association (Nihon Kōga Kyōkai, 日本光画協会).
A successor to the Japan Photographic Art Association (Nihon Kōga Geijutsu Kyōkai, 日本光画芸術協会), this published a magazine (Gashū, 画集) and an annual, and held meetings and exhibitions.
This was published as a contest winner in the September 1929 issue of Geijutsu Shashin Kenkyū, where Kenkichi Nakajima praised it for its lack of gimmickry and for its calm.
Takeuji points out that it is very different from the "nostalgic landscape photography" popular at the time, but that its depiction of the wrecked ship and its horrified spectators also avoids expressing emotion and instead shows natural forces at work.
Also, that merely showing the exterior of "a piece of grass or a tree" was insufficient, and that the photographer "should attempt to capture the inner life hidden in its nature and to express it".
[1] One of Shiotani's better-known photographs[15] is View with Weather Forecast[n 18] (Tenki yohō no aru fūkei, 天気予報のある風景) of 1931.
[1] Shiotani regarded himself as lucky to live in the provincial area of San'in, with its sea, sand dunes, rivers, Mt.
Younger photographers from the area followed in Shiotani's footsteps: most notably Yasuo Iwasa (岩佐保雄), and a little later Shōji Ueda, who went on to enjoy great success.
[6]) After the war, Shiotani opened a photo studio next to his house and also continued photographing for his own interest, remaining faithful to his earlier subject matter but making rather larger prints than before and avoiding darkroom manipulation and retouching.
[3] Edited by Shiotani's great admirer Shōji Ueda and printed and published in Yonago (Tottori), this was later one of only four books[n 26] of pre-1945 photography to be profiled in Ryūichi Kaneko and Ivan Vartanian's survey Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and '70s.
[4] During a visit to Japan in 1978, Lorenzo Merlo, head of the Canon Amsterdam gallery, encountered Album 1923–1973;[12] the book so impressed him that Shiotani was included among "Eight Masters of the Twentieth Century" in an exhibition that was first shown in Bologna in 1979 and that subsequently travelled around Europe.
Curated by Heiting and described by the reviewer for Popular Photography as "the pièce de résistance of the [Photokina] picture shows, without a doubt" and a "magnificent exhibition", this presented Shiotani, Eliot Porter and Jean Dieuzaide as three exponents of the Pencil of Nature.
The images are somehow gentle, like the passing of one season into the next or the process of growing older, a change that is never harsh or self-proclamatory – you just simply notice it one day.
[23] In 2014, hundreds of prints from the Shiotani family's collection, and many other related materials, were donated to the Shimane Art Museum.
[24] According to the chief curator of the museum, "His work [had] been meticulously preserved for eighty years, this miraculous collection remaining in perfect condition.
