I’ve come across several mentions recently of a Japanese photographer whose work I was previously unfamiliar with (he wan’t included in ‘Japanese Photography Today and Its Origin’ which I saw at the ICA in 1979), and who I’m sure we will get to know rather better.
Kazuo Kitai was born in 1944 in Manchuria (or China – depending on who you believe), graduated in Art in Tokyo in 1965 and became well-known in Japan in the 1970s, and in 1975 was the first winner of the major Kimura Ihee prize. As well as photographing in Japan, he returned to China to photograph in the 1970s (shown last year at the Zen Gallery in Tokyo) and also visited Spain in 1977, taking colour pictures that have recently been published in the book Spanish Nights.
He has exhibited with Eikoh Hosoe, Daido Moriyama, Shomei Tomatsu, Masahisa Fukase, Shoji Ueda and Nobuyoshi Araki among Japanese names better known to me. Since 2005 he has photographed a monthly photo-essay for the magazine ‘Nippon Camera’ and some of these have now been published in two books, “Walking with Leica – 1” and “Walking with Leica-2”, and there are also other books of his work available from Tosei, where Kitai has a show scheduled for Jan 2012.
Book collectors might be advised to stock up on his work, particularly some of the earlier of his 15 or so publications, as I’m sure prices will rise given the attention he is currently getting.