Kiss in the Dark: Contemporary Japanese Photography

Afterimage, March-April, 2005 by Masumi Shibata

Kiss in the Dark: Contemporary Japanese Photography. Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography/Tankosha Publishing/150 pp./44 euros (hb). Kiss in the Dark takes a look at where Japanese photography is heading, and the focus is surprisingly not on new media or computer graphics but instead on eight contemporary Japanese photographers, all of whom are searching to create a new value in photography. Miyuki Ichikawa, one of the eight artists, collects images from online web cameras and surveillance cameras. She takes the author-free images and frames them, essentially claiming them as her own. Her work along with the seven others is subtle but charged.

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