SHOMEI TOMATSU Skin of the Nation 2 September - 19 November 2006 Fotomuseum Winterthum www.fotomuseum.ch
foto: Shomei Tomatsu Eiko Ôshima, Actress in the Film Shiiku (Prize Stock), 1961, printed 2003. Gelatin silver print, 27,5 x 42,7 cm. Promised gift of Shirley Ross Sullivan to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art © Shomei Tomatsu
Shomei Tomatsu, born 1930, grew up during the military regime in World War II. He belongs to the "faithless" generation, as he himself has formulated it – to the generation that experienced the shock of Japan's change from a closed into an open society. Tomatsu's major works, for example "Nagasaki 11.02" – the essay on the effects of the atom bomb and the lives of the survivors – and "Chewing Gum and Chocolate", his first attempt at capturing the far-reaching Americanisation in Japan after the war – with the huge dichotomy between the military threat and the cultural attraction, the seduction of Hollywood glamour, are shown in this exhibition. next>>>