Masayoshi Ueda's Photography Art

I like to show images in which photographers are slightly involved. "

Ueda Masayoshi's modernist expression is unique and has not been influenced by the avant-garde movements that appeared in Tokyo and Kansai at that time. Ueda Masayoshi has been deeply rooted in his hometown of Jinggang, and is widely known for shooting Tottori sand dunes.

Dune is the most abstract and monotonous in nature, but it is also a relatively visual background. Its broad and uniform characteristics, like plain background paper in commercial photography, can effectively highlight the main body and eliminate interference, but its size and change are far better than artificial background paper. Dune has its special texture, which can be highlighted or suppressed by photographers. You can use its particle powder sense, or you can use the line level blown by the wind. The ups and downs and slopes of sand dunes provide infinite possibilities for the main body configuration and composition. The gentle boundary between heaven and earth can be used as the dividing line of composition, while the fluent visual language strengthens the surreal contradiction. His Dune Theatre series takes his family, friends and colleagues as the main characters, and the characters are placed in complex compositions with striking gray dunes as the background. By juxtaposing different themes (such as bowling hat, umbrella, bicycle and kimono) on the same horizontal axis, the article is removed from its original context and simplified to show its true appearance and form. In this way, he created video works that gave a surreal atmosphere to simple real life.

Sh?ji Ueda spent his whole life in his hometown, shooting what he wanted to shoot. Ueda's sincerity is to use this amateur spirit to carry out his life. In Japan, Tottori Prefecture is a relatively backward area, equivalent to the western part of China, and in terms of photography talents, Tottori Prefecture ranks among the best in the country. In Tottori, there are the most photographers in Mizi City, and one of the fundamental reasons is that there is a master photographer named Sh?ji Ueda here. Mr. Ueda has influenced countless people with his achievements, including many housewives who picked up cameras and embarked on the road of photography creation. When we visited the 1996 Award-winning Photographer Exhibition in Mizi Tottori Prefecture, we met a female photographer. Mr. Li Du said that she is a housewife, and she only took up photography in recent years, and she has made great achievements.

In recent years, Mr Ueda's international reputation has been declining, but he has been highly praised. In June, 1996, the French government awarded Mr. Ueda the Art and Culture Medal. Historically, Picasso, a master painter, won this honor, and Mr. Ueda, a master photographer, was the first in the world. People in mountainous areas are quite proud of the appearance of such a world-famous photographer in their hometown and regard it as the pride of Tottori County. To this end, Tottori Prefecture invested 654.38+04 billion yen to build this magnificent art museum for Mr. Ueda. 1995 officially completed and opened for business. The Art Museum has a collection of 15000 pieces of Mr. Ueda's works. Tottori Prefecture has invested heavily in building such a large-scale art museum for a photographer, which is a good publicity.

The stage on the sand dune

-Comment on Zhengzhi Memorial Photography Collection "Blowing Wind"/Liao Caoshuying

These sand dunes, which have no beginning or end, seem to be irrelevant figures, as if they were performing a ceremony and putting on an absurd drama. This is not an oil painting by Margaret, a master of surrealism, nor a stills by Beckett or antonioni, but a photo by Japanese photographer Sh?ji Ueda. These photos are very un-Japanese.

Ueda Akiji, a modern photographer, was overshadowed by his contemporaries Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, probably because of his coolness-his works are often quiet, not as grandiose as Moriyama's rough and wild ideas and Araki's whimsy, but as cool jazz, they are confusing and more chewy.

Sh?ji Ueda was born in Tottori Prefecture in 19 13. Because he was not allowed to learn painting at home, he studied photography instead. 1933 set up the first studio in his hometown. In the 1940s, he became famous in Japanese photography with his "Dune Series" and became a representative of post-war avant-garde photography. Since then, he has been engaged in the creation of pure artistic photography until his death in 2000. The commemorative album "Blowing the Wind" was published by Qiu Longtang last year.

Tottori Dune, which is only 5 minutes' drive from Ueda's home, is the stage for most of his works and has become his "signboard". The characters in Ueda Masayoshi's lens are full of stage sense, which is mainly attributed to this barren sand dune. His most famous "The Fox Debut" is just like the author himself, who directly "threatened" the audience; In other photos, the characters always seem to be in their own world, and the photographer intercepted a paragraph for the "audience". Sh?ji Ueda summons the old days in the form of a stage, or another life in the depths of life-an inner world that does not necessarily exist on the surface of life, but always exists in the depths of life and is constantly staged endlessly.

Of course, we will think of Magritte, whether it is the surrealism that separates alienated characters in structure or the surrealism that disappears in space-the influence of surrealism art on him is obvious, but his secret lies in the deepening from surrealism to existentialism-both of which aim to reveal what the ultimate "truth" is, and existentialism is more decisive. Just like Ueda Masayoshi's background: the barren scenery rising behind the photographer, even nothingness-white is really clean!

Sand dunes are also reminiscent of the masterpiece "The Daughter of the Sand" by Japanese existentialist master Abe Gongfang. It is a place that devours or is swallowed by desire, and fear comes from absolute silence. People (especially the body), like an eclipse in time, sometimes only have clothes, masks and photo frames, and more often, even this is unnecessary. Other photos without people, exploring the relationship between things, juxtaposing and revealing deep connections, are also in line with the above. Childlike Calendar, mainly written in the 1960s, is my favorite work-a combination of warmth and strangeness, such as Japanese fairy tales. The explanation is about the customs of Tottori area when 18 years old. In fact, it has moved the stage of the original drama into daily life, making it more mysterious, and may also have an impact on the bizarre pastoral movies in Ji Shu Temple Mountain in the future. Most of them are visions, and people's freedom and non-freedom are also hidden in the ruthless landscape.

After 70' s, his Biography and Landscape Light and Shadow are mysterious, grand and subtle from minimalism. Later works: Whitestorm Black Wave is also special. I like those photos of pure waves best, which are pregnant with infinite richness in subtraction, reminding people of another Japanese master Hiroshi Sugimoto. Both of them follow the principle of subtraction, and they are brilliant in restraint. This is also the reason why Whitestorm's color photos use soft lens. Soft light plays the role of subtraction here, which seems to show the author's anxiety about the inevitable colors on the world surface. This kind of anxiety seems to have been forgotten by photography in the digital age, because photography without thinking must have no anxiety, and vice versa.