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How has photography come to occupy its place within contemporary art? The answer
depends on where one begins. Many influential Euro-American histories have traced
photography’s emergence through Conceptual art and institutional critique, while parallel
developments in Japan followed a markedly different trajectory.

Photography in Parallel: Japanese and Western Critical Perspectives since the 1960s brings together two newly commissioned essays by critics Takanao Seki and Megumu
Takashima alongside five historically significant texts selected by Miyuki Endo and Gen
Umezu. Originally published from the 1960s onwards, and newly translated into English,
writings by critics including Toshiaki Minemura and Yusuke Nakahara examine how
photography has been discussed in Japan in relation to painting, sculpture, printmaking, and other art forms. Rather than presenting these historical writings as fixed records of past debates, this volume reconsiders them in relation to contemporary practice.
Three essays by Nancy Foote, Andrei Monastyrski and Robert Smithson, selected by
Duncan Wooldridge, widen the frame, carrying these Japanese debates into broader
transnational dialogue. Through this exchange between Japanese and English-language
discourse, the book develops a layered reading of photographic expression from the postwar period to today, inviting renewed attention to the multifaceted nature of photography and its capacity to generate new critical possibilities.

Published as part of the T3 NEW TALENT programme – an initiative by T3 to foster
emerging talent and support the development of photographic culture in Asia – this book
introduces Japanese photographic criticism into wider circulation.

Featuring Nancy Foote, Yukio Kondo, Toshiaki Minemura, Andrei Monastyrski, Yusuke
Nakahara, Terry Smith, Takanao Seki, Megumu Takashima, Kyoji Takizawa

128 pages, 14.2 x 21.2cm, softcover
Published by 1000 Words