Kishin Kaidan | Shomei Tomatsu pt.4 | Between “Seeing” and “Showing”
Kishin Kaidan｜Shomei Tomatsu pt.4 is now live.
pt.4 shifts the conversation from “why Okinawa?” to what came after Tomatsu moved there: a return to the starting point, and a re-examination of modern civilization—material, urban, and technological.
Tomatsu argues that photography is not outside that system, but one of its products. In that sense, to rethink the city is to rethink photography, and to rethink photography is to rethink the city.
He then draws a decisive line between two ways of working: making photographs to show—aligning with the “greatest common denominator” of social reception—and making photographs to see, stripping away ready-made concepts and meeting the subject with the naked eye.
The members-only version has now been updated through pt.4, and includes:
- the original Japanese text of the interview
- a full English translation
- a full Traditional Chinese translation
