Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness – W. Eugene Smith on his photo essay of the Minamata incident
I visited the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum which is in the beautiful Ebisu Garden Place complex in Tokyo, Japan. The museum was exhibiting on 3 floors: 3F – Eugène Atget: The Eternal Inspiration, 2F – Photographs of Innocence and of Experience
Contemporary Japanese Photography vol. 14, 1F – W. Eugene Smith: A Life in Photography. These shows run through January 28, 2018
On F3 you can see Atget’s beautiful images printed in the methods of his time and then printed in modern methods. You then move through short but sweet collections of works by Man Ray, Daido Moriyama, Lee Friedlander and others. F2 offered a nice break with vivid color work from contemporary Japanese (or working-in-Japan) photographers. The W. Eugene Smith exhibit is huge, covering the major photo essays he did for Life. It is exhausting to try to take all the images in in one afternoon. The strongest story for me was for the Minamata incident involving industrial pollution by the Chisso Chemical Co. that ravaged a Japanese fishing community. My son just studied it in his environmental science class so it was stirring for him as well.
I highly recommend this set of exhibits and TOP Museum. If you are looking for a place to stay or just have a great breakfast buffet, the Westin Tokyo across the street is wonderful. My suggestion is to have a breakfast buffet at the Westin, view part of TOP Museum, take a light lunch break in their 1F cafe, view the rest of TOP Museum and then have dinner at any of the fine restaurants on B1F or at the top of the Garden Place Tower (also called TOP); most of them reopen for dinner at 5:30pm. Ebisu Garden Place is accessible from Ebisu Station on the Yamanote Line. There is a covered walkway from the station to the complex.
SteveMedinaPhotography.com 