Beyond the Photographic Frame

Photography entered a new phase in the 1980s. Until then photographs had been regarded as straightforward records of external objects, but new movements designated by such names as "make photo" and "constructed photo" introduced artistic manners and concepts with which photographers made up their objects more actively according to their aesthetics. Meanwhile in the world of art arose a movement for using the reproducible, recording nature of photographic images as a means of expression. Photography thus eluded various frames such as "photography / art," "record / expression" and "object / subject," and was opened as a medium available to everybody who has images to express. In view of this situation, the exhibition selected eight Japanese and three foreign artists "who, independent of traditional contexts, freely use photography between 'things' and images, and have especially strong powers of conception and visual representation as well as interrelationship with some other genres of expression."

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