The 9th Exhibition of New Cosmos of Photography 2000
Report on the open-selection meetings
Public selection : Dec.15.2000(FRI)
The exhibition “New Cosmos of Photography 2000” was held at Modapolitica in Aoyama, Tokyo. On the first day, December 15, there was an open-selection meeting composed of the judges, Nobuyoshi Araki, Kotaro Iizawa, Fumio Nanjo, and Shino Kuraishi. Haruko Nakamura was chosen from eight excellent work award winners in the 21st and 22nd open contests for the grand prize, and Tomoko Sawada and Daisuke Yamada won special prizes. Tatsunori Iwamoto, Kayo Ume, and Yoshio Okumura were awarded incentive prizes for their good works. More than 400 people related to excellent work award winners, photographers, galleries, museums, publishers, and students attended the open-selection meeting and the opening reception.
Overall Evaluation
At the 9th open-selection meeting of “New Cosmos of Photography,” the winning works of the 21st and 22nd contests were evaluated.
Overview of the 21st selection
Nobuyoshi Araki
This contest has a history of ten years, and now it has grown to be able to receive this amount of entries and to cover all genres. Looking back on the activities which needed many years to prepare for the acceptance of a wide range of photographs, I am deeply moved. I have been connected, though their works, with photographers who have repeatedly entered the competition. In that sense, “New Cosmos of Photography” is slightly different from others. The works of contestants this year are high quality; they photograph not simply to please viewers, but they create their own styles. Before welcoming the 21st century, I would like to go back to my original intention, and the works that I appreciate most now are “dignified” or “graceful” ones. If viewers sense the human dignity of the subject in a picture, the photographer has nothing or no one to fear.
Kotaro Iizawa
This time I noticed that there were many pictures of elderly women (though I don’t know why.) It is interesting that young men and women in their twenties take pictures of their grandparents’ generation. A generation gap might excite their curiosity or interest. At the same time, elderly people, who remind young people of death, might make good subjects for photographs. However, a cheap story-telling style should be avoided. In a situation that the number of applicants exceeds five hundred, we have to reconsider the screening method. In Particular, the number of entries in the form of an album is so many that it is hard to view them all. Applicants should manage to narrow the number down.
Fumio Nanjo
Roughly speaking, when pictures look attractive, it is because either the “subject” is charming or the way the photograph is taken is unusual. Thus a good picture is a complex amalgam of these two. When I’m judging in a competition, I always have this in mind. However, that is not everything. It happens that some works are completely attributed with that quality, but there is something missing. The art of photography requires something to be touching, mysterious, frightening, or speak despite being unpolished, which could be related to love or youthfulness and should be something existing prior to techniques. It is difficult to learn it by studying photography. The only way to obtain it depends on what photographers read, what they talk about with friends, what they eat, how they travel; the whole experience of living one’s life. That is important.
Tadanori Yokoo
It is surprising that the most of the applicants are women. In terms of creating things, the female principles seem to overwhelm or have priority over the male principles. To define them more logically, I think that women have a receptive capacity based on feelings, whereas men are senders of messages, in principle. In this respect, most of the entries to this competition have a receptive capacity. Men are reluctant to act on instinct or to show their true colors, but women show their true nature without difficulty, or with more exaggeration, they are more honest about living. That women are more honest or serious about living their lives is my impression. The “subject” that men want to photograph is the outside world, while women turn to their inner feelings. Another point from a man’s view is that women’s instinctive ideas compared with men’s intelligence seem to be overflowing, discharged without much thought. If there is a man who is not shocked by this overwhelming number of files and expressions, he will find it difficult to live in the 21st century. He would be a failed man, I’m afraid. Or he should rise to the challenge of how he can bring out the female principle in himself.
Overview of the 22nd selection
Nobuyoshi Araki
This time I noticed that there were many pictures of elderly women (though I don’t know why). It is interesting that young men and women in their twenties take pictures of their grandparents’ generation. A generation gap might excite their curiosity or interest. At the same time, elderly people, who remind young people of death, might make good subjects for photographs. However, a cheap story-telling style should be avoided. In the situation that the number of applicants exceeds five hundred, we have to reconsider the screening method. In Particular, the number of pictures in albums is so great that it is hard to look at them all. Applicants should manage to narrow the number down.
Fumio Nanjo
The mood of entrants has changed as a whole. First of all, the number of entries that deal with sex and the nude has decreased, although pornographic gestures and situations are still shown here and there because they are imprinted on people’s minds subconsciously. Another impression is that in the increased number of works, photographers are trying to turn their eyes away, avoiding or running away from their subjects. I wonder if it is a reflection of the present times, or it may be an autistic situation. Energetic photographs are taken by those who went to foreign countries—probably because they were away from the pessimistic mood in Japan. The good point is that rich colors are presented. Some works look as if they were made for the sake of colors. In painting, it used to be said that lines represent ideas, and colors, feelings. Does this imply that photographers are heading for the expression of feelings? And, there are some works designed like graphics. It is well know that Japanese graphic design is excellent. Half of the credit must go to photography, because graphic design owes its success to photography to some extent. Therefore, it is natural that photography and design are closely related, but it has not been very noticeable to date. There is nothing wrong about describing a personal life, but in this rotten society, we still have many things to criticize, or get angry about. Today’s social issues such as problems of high school students may have their roots in culture and educational system. Japan has been a deteriorating, controlled society under a bureaucracy, and we should voice our concerns. Overall, such works as I expected are very few.
Gilles Mora
It was a wonderful opportunity for me to observe directly the works of Japanese young photographers. Also it was very encouraging for me, particularly in my present position as an editor and art director of a photography festival, to see how enthusiastically they are engaged in creative work in terms of expression through photography in Japan. It is a reasoned argument that every artist is inspired or learns from the works by great artists of all ages and countries, and always tray to copy them, in the process of establishing his/her own viewpoint or world. Reproducing great artists’ works is usually a compulsory in the curriculm for art students, and I would say that it is a very useful approach or method not only to polish skills but also to examine objectively his/her standpoint. However, works on such a level are not tolerated in a contest in which contestants compete with each for their orginal viewpoints. Although it is not easy to make original works of new ideas, I hope that an open competition like “New Cosmos of Photography” will motivate and encourage enthusiastic artists to have their own for works of photography.
Shino Kuraishi
First, I would like to mention that the tendency of entries drew my attention. Generally speaking, when I see photographs at museums, schools of photography, galleries, or in publications, the works of young photographers give me the impression that many of them prefer to take pictures of scenery which looks bare or deserted. In the latter half of the 1990s, landscape was one of the keywords, and I used to react negatively or positively to each case. And as for this competition, I am impressed by entrants’ good intentions and enthusiasm to photograph “people” for good or bad. It is also noticeable that some entrants wrote comments, in the margins of their photographs, on feelings about labyrinthine complexities such as meaning of life, urge to die, fear of death, hurt, pain, and illness. I think that many entrants tried to use their photographs to do away with a dead-end situation ambiguously, in which they ask themselves a question of ‘confronted self. I find myself tired when I see and react to those works of artists, who give up easily and try to have their quiet pictures answer the question. Few artists turned their vexation violently upon their works or put cold criticism into their works, to mark a contrast with the appropriateness of the question. No matter how their works might ruin the form of photographs, they should be powerful enough. They might end up being something inconsistent or unreasonable, go to extremes without reason, accumulate malice intentions, or whatever. They are serious about photography merely within the frame of common sense, and I think they are sentimental and weak. It is high time to give up personal pictures. I feel like asking them. “Are you so important to you?” Basically I respect photographers because I cannot cut myself off as cruelly as great photographers do with themselves. Therefore, I expect them to say ‘I don’t want myself,’ even if it is a lie. It means, the other way around, that the entrants to this competition are not strict with themselves because they are ambiguous and empty, and that attitude is reflected in their leniency with others in their works. When they show their works, saying, “This is what I saw,” it is expected that their photographs be openly based on reality while enclosing ‘I’ in parenthesis to beat it away. This sort of frankness or directness is important. Now we should think again about the objectivity of photography, which has become a cliche.
