Tokyo Photographic Art Museum - Ebisu

I only managed to see two exhibitions at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum: Thought of a Distant Window and Innervisions by Pedro Costa.

Unfortunately, the second floor was closed. I had expected more from this visit - perhaps a permanent collection, a few iconic prints. Japanese photographers have given so much to the history of photography.

Time in Negative

In truth, the photographs themselves didn’t strike me deeply. The first, a group show, felt rather ordinary in terms of photographic quality.

The second, however, was more complex. Yes, the images were beautiful - faces lit with precision, scenes of haunting photogenic grace. Because poverty, pain, age and despair can be extraordinarily photogenic, carrying that singular, unsettling kind of beauty that disturbs as much as it attracts.

Yet despite the artist’s sincerity, the posed portraits and stylised misery convey a certain ambiguity.

Veils

Ultimately, the real strength of this visit was not the photography itself, but the way photography was exhibited.

What I saw today perfectly echoed Alternatif-Art’s recent feature, “An Art Gallery in 2035.” The museum offered a form of artistic hybridisation - merging photography, sculpture, sound, video, light and darkness into an immersive experience.

Here, a reversed clock became the frame for a stop-motion sequence, a negative of passing time.

Elsewhere, a printed fabric turned into a living sculpture, with layers of projected light adding depth and variation.

Innervisions

Finally, the Innervisions corridor prepared the viewer for a fully sensory immersion in the artist’s world, a multidimensional space, somewhere between photography, music, memory, and consciousness.