Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde
ナゴヤ・フォトアバンガルド | |
Photo Avant-Garde, NAGOYA exhibition at Nagoya City Art Museum, 1989, showing a central photograph of Variation of "Buddhist Temple's Birdcage" | |
| Formation | February 1939 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Yoshio Shimozato; Minoru Sakata; Seikō Samizo; Chirū Yamanaka; Taizō Inagaki; Tsugio Tajima; Kansuke Yamamoto |
| Dissolved | 1941 |
| Type | Photography collective |
| Location |
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Leader | Minoru Sakata |
Key people | Kansuke Yamamoto; Tsugio Tajima; Keiichiro Gotō |
Parent organization | Nagoya Avant-Garde Club |
Formerly called | Nagoya Photography Culture Association (名古屋写真文化協会) |
Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde (Nagoya Foto Abangyarudo (ナゴヤ・フォトアバンガルド); also known as Nagoya Shashin Bunka Kyōkai (名古屋写真文化協会)) was a Nagoya-based Japanese avant-garde photography collective formed in February 1939. It emerged when the photography section of the cross-disciplinary Nagoya Avant-Garde Club became independent. Through a Nagoya-based avant-garde circulation of clubs, magazines, and roundtable debates—including discussions in Camera Art and Photo Times and in the Nagoya coterie magazine Cameraman—the group developed and disseminated theories of avant-garde photography; it was led by Minoru Sakata and included the poet-photographer Kansuke Yamamoto.
Later historiography has emphasized Nagoya's outsized role in Japanese modern photography. Critic Ryuichi Kaneko characterizes Nagoya as a major base for Japanese Surrealism and—by 1939—an important stronghold of the photo-avant-garde. Photo historian Joe Takeba likewise characterizes Nagoya's photographic activity as a "magnetic field" for modern photographic expression in Japan.
In wall text and object labels prepared for Surrealism Beyond Borders (The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Tate Modern, 2021–2022), The Met describes Nagoya as "one of the liveliest centers" of Surrealism-related photo-club activity in interwar Japan, noting that wartime pressures forced groups to change names and veil their activity.