A representative work by Toshio Shibata, a leading Japanese photographer. This series captures civil engineering structures across Japan, such as vast reclaimed lands, giant dams, and retaining walls and erosion control facilities built in mountainous areas, using an 8x10 large-format camera. The detailed depiction unique to large format and the distortion-free images vividly capture even the texture of concrete and the slopes of the land.
The monochromatic screens are constructed with compositions that strongly emphasize horizontals and verticals, clearly presenting the mass of artificial structures and their relationship with the surrounding nature. The infrastructure spread across Japan's mountains and rivers since the period of rapid economic growth appears as entities with well-balanced geometric forms, yet imbued with a tension with nature. Shibata does not critically denounce or praise them, but quietly presents them with a keen sensitivity to the forms themselves.
The book was originally planned to be titled "Nippon Tenkei (Japanese Glimpses)," but due to a typo at the printing office, it was published as "Nippon Tenkei (Japanese Typical Form)." As a result, this name resonates as a word that transcends individual fragments of scenery and indicates the structural characteristics carved into Japan's land, that is, the "typical form" of modern Japanese landscapes. In 1992, it received the 17th Kimura Ihei Award. Edited by Kyoko Yamagishi. It is composed of illustrations photographed in various locations from the 1980s to the early 1990s.
[Title] Nippon Tenkei
[Publisher] Asahi Shimbun Publications
[Publication Date] October 1992, First Edition
[Page Count] Unpaginated
[Size] Approx. 29 x 30 x 1.4 cm, 1080g
[Format] Hardcover
[Language] Japanese
[Title Reading] NIPPON TENKEI
[Author/Editor] Toshio Shibata / Author
[Printing]
[ISBN] 4-02-256508-X
[Condition] Used [4] Good to Fair (Slight tear/missing part on obi, slight foxing on edges, slight fading)
[Accessories] Obi
[Included in]
[Related Exhibitions]
Toshio Shibata (1949-)
Born in Tokyo in 1949. Graduated from the Department of Oil Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts, and completed his graduate studies there.
In 1975, he received a scholarship from the Belgian Ministry of Education, enrolled in the photography department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Ghent, and began his career as a photographer. He returned to Japan in 1979.
He gained recognition for his works capturing artificial structures in nature, such as dams, erosion control dams, and concrete retaining walls across Japan, using a large-format camera. Through meticulous monochrome prints and precise compositions, he presented the intrinsic structure and form of modern Japanese landscapes. In 1992, he received the 17th Kimura Ihei Award for his photobook "Nippon Tenkei." In the same year, he was selected for "New Photography 8" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
He continued to exhibit his work both domestically and internationally, including a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 1997. Since the 2000s, he has also worked on color pieces, expanding his range of expression. In 2008, he held a large-scale solo exhibition "Landscape" at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. In 2009, he received the Photographic Society of Japan's Artist Award and the Higashikawa Award for Domestic Photographer.
His works are held in major museums both in Japan and abroad, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Centre Pompidou, and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.
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