What I am doing
YAMAZAWA Eiko
2020.2.29. Sat– 3.21. Sat
12:00–19:00 (Sat 12:00–17:00 / Tue by appointment only) Closed on Sunday and Monday
©YAMAZAWA Eiko What I am doing No.81
The Third Gallery Aya is very pleased to announce an exhibition by YAMAZAWA Eiko.
YAMAZAWA Eiko, born in 1899 in Osaka and is regarded as the pioneering female photographer in Japan. She first studied Japanese-style painting, then decided to go to the US to study painting further. She arrived on the West Coast in 1926 and worked as an assistant to the photographer Consuelo Kanaga (1894–1978) while studying painting at California School of Fine Arts. After eagerly learning photographic techniques and widening her knowledge, Yamazawa returned to Japan in 1929. In 1931, she opened her own photo studio. It was successful throughout her career, with the exception of the World War II. After a long career doing commercial work such as portraits, she abandoned commercial photography entirely, closing her studio and becoming involved in abstract art in the 1960s.
In the 1980s she produced her most important series, titled What I’m doing, which was what we would today call “constructed photography”. A large-scale retrospective exhibition of her work was held at Otani Memorial Art Museum, Nishinomiya City and at Tokyo Photographic Art Museum from 2019 to 2020.
