Paper short abstract:

While Yamazawa Eiko and Horino Masao rarely interacted during their lifetimes and had varying attitudes towards photographic mass reproduction, this paper suggests that the intersection of theater and photography has been a significant element of both modernists’ understanding of modern photography.

Paper long abstract:

While photography has been praised for its accuracy in portraying human figures since its introduction to Japan, stage photography, or butai shashin, did not gain prominence in society until the early twentieth century. Paralleling the explosive growth of illustrated periodicals, stage photography illustrates the visionary changes that have taken place during the era of increasingly accessible photographic technology. Camera lenses were used to photograph actors from traditional theater, such as Kabuki, Nō and Bunraku, but photographers who embraced the superiority of the mechanical eye, or "camera eye," began capturing modern theater performances as new modes of expressions of lived reality within the thriving urban culture that emerged in the aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923.

This paper examines and compares stage photographs produced by Yamazawa Eiko (1899-1995) and Horino Masao (1907-1998), two modernist artists who have long been marginalized in the history of photography. In the past few years, Yamazawa Eiko has been highly regarded for her connection with American modern photography and her experimentation with abstract art, in light of fruitful scholarship that attempts to remap the history of photography through the rediscovery of female photographic practices worldwide. However, her early work, primarily focused on portraiture from the 1930s to the 1950s, has remained largely unstudied because of the lack of negatives. Less known are her stage photographs of Shingeki (literally "new drama") actress Yamamoto Yasue (1906-1993), who is also a crucial member of the Tsukiji Little Theatre. As for Horino Masao, he began recording Japanese modern dance and theater performances during the late 1920s and later published articles about stage photography in Photo Times, one of the leading magazines of the New Photography Movement.

By tracing their works and discourses around feminine beauty, portraiture, and photographic art in general from the 1920s to 1950s, this study finds that despite the fact that the two artists had little interaction during their lifetimes and varying attitudes concerning the mass reproduction of photographs, the intersection of theater and photography has been a significant element of their understanding of modern photography.