Vivo (photography)

Vivo
VIVO
FoundedJuly 1957
DissolvedJune 1961
TypePhotographic cooperative
FocusCreative post‑war documentary and expressive photography
HeadquartersHigashi Ginza, Tokyo, Japan
Region served
Japan
MembersSix founding members
Key people
Eikoh Hosoe
Kikuji Kawada
Ikkō Narahara
Akira Satō
Akira Tanno
Shōmei Tōmatsu

Vivo[1] was a short-lived Japanese photographic cooperative.

Eikoh Hosoe, Kikuji Kawada, Ikkō Narahara, Akira Satō, Akira Tanno, and Shōmei Tōmatsu — six of the participants of the celebrated 1957 exhibition Jūnin no me (10人の眼, Eyes of ten) — formed the Vivo cooperative in July 1957, naming it after the Esperanto word for "life."

Vivo emerged from a postwar photographic milieu shaped in part by the Japan Subjective Photography League, founded in 1956, through which younger photographers such as Ikkō Narahara, Kiyoji Ōtsuji, and Yasuhiro Ishimoto were briefly brought into the same field of reference as prewar avant-garde figures including Kansuke Yamamoto.[2][3][4]

They shared an office and darkroom in Higashi Ginza (Tokyo), marketing and distributing their own work. Kōtarō Iizawa terms their office "the epicenter of the 'image generation's' photographic expression," and the members' activities "a prime example" of the way Japanese photographers of the time "confronted head-on the transformation of modern Japanese society."[5]

Their work moved from the photjournalism's style to capturing reality beyond language. Their work as a result was often "are-bure-boke", meaning "blurry and out-of-focus".[6]

The group disbanded in June 1961.

Retrospectives have included a major exhibition at the Shadai Gallery.[7]

Notes

  1. ↑ Within Japanese, this is normally written not in kana but in roman letters, in full capitals: "VIVO".
  2. ↑ "主観主義写真（主観的写真）" [Subjectivist Photography (Subjective Photography)]. artscape (in Japanese). Retrieved 2026-03-22.
  3. ↑ Kaneko, Ryūichi (2013). "The Position of Kansuke Yamamoto: Reexamining Japan's Modern Photography". In Keller, Judith; Maddox, Amanda (eds.). Japan's Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto. Los Angeles: Getty Publications. p. 172. ISBN 9781606061329.
  4. ↑ Stojković, Jelena (2020). Surrealism and Photography in 1930s Japan: The Impossible Avant-Garde. London: Routledge. p. 168. ISBN 9781788314053.
  5. ↑ Kōtarō Iizawa, "The evolution of postwar photography" (chapter of Tucker et al., The History of Japanese Photography), pp. 217, 210.
  6. ↑ "Article". www.gallery.ca. National Gallery of Canada magazine. Retrieved 21 July 2025.
  7. ↑ Shadai Gallery exhibition, June–July 2007.

References

  • (in Japanese) Nihon shashinka jiten (日本写真家事典, 328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers). Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2000. ISBN 4-473-01750-8. P. 348.
  • Tucker, Anne Wilkes, et al. The History of Japanese Photography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-300-09925-8. Pp. 217–20, 376.
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