Masahiro Kodaira was born in 1972, and graduated from Tokyo Zokei University in 1997. Kodaira has been pursuing photography since 1994, with several solo and group exhibitions to his name. In addition to his own work, Kodaira has recently been involved in making new prints of the late, renowned avant-garde photographer Kiyoji Otsuji.

In the following interview, conducted earlier this year, Kodaira discusses with Japan Exposures his two major series to date, “Dr. Lorentz’s Butterfly” and “Onbashira”, how he came to photography, and his relationship with Otsuji, a major influence on a number of Japanese photographers. In addition to the photographs represented here, you can also view an extended gallery of Kodaira’s work.

Interview by Yu Hidaka for Japan Exposures.

Japan Exposures: First of all, as a way of introducing you to our readers, I would like to ask you about your solo exhibition entitled “Dr. Lorentz’s Butterfly”, which was held at the AiDEM PHOTO GALLERY SIRius in Tokyo in 2002. For the show, you brought together work done over many years, didn’t you?

Masahiro Kodaira: Yes, “Dr. Lorentz’s Butterfly” was a major outgrowth of many years of work. I had some experience to have my work exhibited before, but this was the first exhibition where I had a clear idea of what I wanted my photography to say. I was looking for the place to show my work that didn’t already have a fixed style or image attached to it. That is to say, not galleries run by camera companies, not small underground types of spaces, and so on. Instead I was looking for a gallery that was open to all genres. Then, I came across an opportunity to try for an open call that was issued by SIRius, and I passed the review.

JE: SIRius has a quite large gallery space compared to other places in Tokyo. How many photographs did you exhibit there?

MK: I showed 30 photographs there. Although usually solo exhibitions held there feature about 45 works, I chose 30 images because I thought the relationship between the works and the white space of the gallery walls important to creating a kind of tension. But after the show, some people told me that fewer photos might have been better for that purpose.

JE: For me too, as a viewer, I remember that exhibition as the first time I had a clear understanding of your work. When I looked at your photographs, photography’s particular way of representation was readily apparent to me, and I was slightly surprised at this. This was probably the first opportunity for you to highlight this aspect of your work, wasn’t it?

MK: Well, it’s true that I am interested in photography’s form, but strictly speaking, how my works look is not my goal. It’s just an outcome of pursuing what I want to express with my photographs. The particularity of photographic representation just helped me to say it. For example, take the abstract concept of “beauty,” which art can help to make concrete and easy to see and understand. I feel that the photographic form can be an essential tool to express photographers’ message.

JE: What surprised me about your show was that, in a sense, the formalism of your photography seemed too “classical” a way for a photographer to express themselves at that time. Around 2002, when I visited your show, photography of younger photographers rarely focused on formal things like composition. Subject matter, or such things like blurry images or grainy images stood out more in other photographers’ shows. Most photographers seemed to rarely care about photographic composition, and only use those techniques and styles that are popular at that time. Some didn’t know that formalism was one of the crucial means of expression in photography’s history, especially in the modernist period. Maybe this is, in part, a failure of how photography is taught in Japan. But your work is quite different.

MK: For me, art history is important. I think that the situation of young people born in the 1990s is different from that of my own generation. They happen to have been born into an information rich society that’s superficial. Because of that, perhaps they’re interested less in formalism and more in textures or the unexpected, by which I mean taking familiar, everyday objects and shooting them with medium or large format cameras, or in close-up, in order to create a raw “anti-everyday” reality. For those photographs, composition is difficult to create. I think that the fad of shooting 6×6 color film of the last few years represents the desires of both photographers and viewers. In my opinion, I think that the role of art has historically been and continues to be one of solving life’s mystery. I also belong to this history, but I use my awareness of what has been done in the past to forge my own way of art. Photography is also an art of form. I want to grasp the mystery of life with the help of the concepts such as beauty or formal “balance.” Why do people say that something is beautiful, or why do people find balance in something — what do such things mean to us?

“In front of me, the world spreads out, uncontrolled by my intentions. I had such a sense when I took these photographs, and wanted to take photographs where the past and the future meets.”

JE: Since art history is important to you, I’d also like to ask you about your own history. I believe that your education at Tokyo Zokei University, where you graduated, and your relationship with Kiyoji Otsuji, were crucial to your development, weren’t they?

MK: Yes, that’s right. Before I entered university I had studied the practical basics of art at a kind of “cram school.” So, I was able to concentrate on photography at university. When I was in my forth year, one of my professors, Kazuto Miura, introduced me to Otsuji-san, who many of my professors had studied under. At that time, he was already retired and pretty much confined to his home, and so some students including me went to visit him and to arrange his negatives in his house.

Whenever I visited him, I always felt like I was visiting my grandfather. I visited his place almost every day for four or five years, before he passed away. What I learned from him is that I should continue to pursue my own way of photography. Like some other photographers who also had close relationships with him often say, I always ask myself, “If he were living now, what would he say about my photographs?” This question is a kind of litmus test for how I think about my own work.

Incidentally, “Dr. Lorentz’s Butterfly” wasn’t the title I originally had, but Otsuji-san pointed out to me that my original title sounded stiff, so I changed it. The day that I decided on “Dr. Lorentz’s Butterfly” was also the day that Otsuji-san passed away, so I wasn’t able to share with him the new title of my show.

JE: What originally triggered your interest in photography?

MK: When I was a kid, I already had an interest in art. The first book I bought when I was a junior high-school student was an anthology by Escher. Then I came across the book by Jung and Wolfgang Pauli called “The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche.” After reading this book, I felt that I had found a clue as how to articulate in art what had been up until then just vague thoughts.

JE: Does that mean that you were first interested in producing something artistic or cultural in the broad sense, rather than specifically photography?

MK: Well, first of all, I wanted to be a painter, so I thought it would be better for me to study painting. But some friends that I made at the “cram school” were able to paint precisely what they wanted to paint on canvas. In such an environment I realized that it might be difficult for me to be a painter. So, when I entered Zokei I chose to join the department of design and gave up my desire to be a painter. At that time I also had interest in typography and graphic design.

JE: Then you came to photography?

MK: Yes, that’s right. I tool some photography classes, and found that I wanted to pursue photography. When I saw my professor [Akihide] Tamura sensei’s work entitled “Afternoon” at a group exhibition in 1993, I was taken aback, and this work was the trigger for me to start concentrating on photography. I learned a lot from one class in particular. This particular class required me to visit about 100 galleries within a year and to write an essay about each exhibition I attended. Also at this time I was “collecting” photography and art magazines to supplement my studies. When I started studying on photography, I thought it was easy to take photographs. However, when I saw that taking photographs of the world around me was a way to represent myself, I came to realize the profoundity of photography as a medium.

JE: Your next exhibition after “Dr. Lorenz’s Butterfly” was “Onbashira.” I imagine that you had to take some risks to show “Onbashira.”

MK: Well, you know, the show “Onbashira” deals with a festival in Japan*, so quite a few people reacted like, “Why did you take photographs of festivals?” Many people who had visited “Dr. Lorentz’s Butterfly” expressed disappointment and said it would have been better if I had kept the direction of that show. But some photographers also appreciated this exhibition. Although basically I seldom take photographs of people, I wanted to experiment with taking snapshots of people for this series.

JE: Certainly at first glance, this series appears to be different from “Dr. Lorentz’s Butterfly.” For me, as someone who knows your position vis-à-vis the history of formal art and photography, some parts of “Onbashira” seem connected with the conception of the previous show. Both exhibitions show an adventurous pursuit of the possibilities of photographic form. Yet each show is received by viewers as completely different. If people concentrate only on the content of your photographs, there is a danger of them missing the forms that are there for them to discover, though.

MK: It’s easy to miss this aspect of my photography, because they directly represent the past traditions of Japan.

JE: People tend to look only at the surface content of photographs and overlook the aspect of photography as a transformed reality. But such way of looking is not enough. At a festival which is very dynamic, you look at the movement of the world in front of you through your viewfinder and release the shutter.

MK: In front of me, the world spreads out, uncontrolled by my intentions. I had such a sense when I took these photographs, and wanted to take photographs where the past and the future meets.

JE: Finally, could you let us know what you are doing now?

MK: I sometimes do black and white printing, and I had been making new prints of Otsuji’s work for the show called “Jikken-kobo,” (“Experimental Workshop”), which will be held in the UK in this October. I myself am preparing for a solo exhibition called “Tsuzukinokawarini” to be held from June 9 (Tues.) to 15 (Mon.) at the Gekkoso annex KONPARU Gallery in Ginza, Tokyo. Then, if possible I would like to publish a book of my work.

* Onbashira (literally “honored pillar”) is a festival that takes place in Nagano Prefecture once every six years.

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Yu Hidaka is an Assistant Professor at Gunma Prefectural Women’s University, where she teaches on visual culture. Her book, Reading Contemporary Photography: Toward Democratic Vistas, will be published by Seikyu-sha this June. She has written on photography and other forms of visual media for various Japanese publications, including Studio Voice and Asahi Camera. She received her MA in the Course of Culture and Representation from Tokyo University.