[Yoko, From Window]
Untitled from the series Yoko, From Window
©️Masahisa Fukase Archives
Although playing can be seen as the epitome of freedom, it is true that sometimes it is characterized by the opposite: the existence of precise rules that the participants must accept. Stable, repetitive rules and guidelines are common elements of rituals and competitions and are also found in poetry and music in the form of rhymes, stanzas and choruses. Every game, they say, is a system of rules that guarantees order and stability.
In 1974, photographer Masahisa Fukase set himself the rule of photographing his wife Yoko Wanibe every day from the window of their apartment in Tokyo when she left the house to go to work. Sometimes she would pose for him, inventing gestures and postures, and sometimes she simply looked back at him, waiting for the click that marked the daily ritual. These numerous portraits of Yoko appeared in an exhibition in 1978, two years after the couple had split up, along with other images of their life together, including photographs of the cats and crows that Fukase would also photograph obsessively throughout his life and that populate his imaginary.
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Born in Hokkaido in 1934 and died in Tokyo in 2012, Masahisa Fukase is considered one of the most radical and experimental photographers of the Japanese post-war generation. He was descended from a family of photographers. His grandfather founded a photographic studio and his father continued the family business, which he took over after studying Photography at university. He then moved to Tokyo, where he worked as a fashion and advertising photographer. In the 1970s, together with Daido Moriyama and Shomei Tomatsu, he founded The Workshop photography school. He became world famous for his photographic series and subsequent publication, Karasu (Ravens) in 1986. His work has been widely exhibited in institutions such as the MoMA in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, the Foundation Cartier in Paris and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and is part of important collections such as those of the V&A, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Getty Museum. His first retrospective in Europe was in 2017 as part of the Rencontres d’Arles. He has published many important books including Yoko (1978) and Bukubuku (2004).
14–MASAHISA FUKASE
[YOKO, FROM WINDOW]
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