(15 December 1903 – 15 March 1942) was one of the most prominent

photographer A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographe ...

s in the first half of the 20th century in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

Life

Yasui was born in

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...

and became a member of the

Naniwa Photography Club The Naniwa Photography Club (浪華写真倶楽部) is an avant-garde amateur photography club that was established with the support of the Kuwata Photographic Materials company in 1904 in Osaka. It is the oldest amateur photography club in Japan. ...

(, ''Naniwa Shashin Kurabu'') in 1920s and also became a member of the

Tampei Photography Club The was a group based in Osaka from 1930 until 1941 that promoted avant-garde and, toward the end, socially concerned photography. The group was founded around the photographer Bizan Ueda, among photographers who bought their supplies from the T ...

(, ''Tanpei Shashin Kurabu'') in 1930. His photographs cover a wide range from

pictorialism Pictorialism is an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. There is no standard definition of the term, but in general it refers to a style in which the photographer ha ...

straight photography Straight may refer to: Slang * Straight, slang for heterosexual ** Straight-acting, an LGBT person who does not exhibit the appearance or mannerisms of the gay stereotype * Straight, a member of the straight edge subculture Sport and games * St ...

, including

photomontage Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. Sometimes the resulting composite image is photographed so that the final image ...

s. He appreciated every type and kind of photographs without any prejudice and tried not to reject any of them even during wartime.

Works

* photographs of Jewish people who fled from the Nazis to

Kobe Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, whic ...

(Japan) in the 1930s — in collaboration with several other photographers in the Tampei Shashin Club, such as Osamu Shiihara,

Kaneyoshi Tabuchi was a renowned Japanese photographer A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties ...

and

Tōru Kōno was a Japanese photographer. Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, editor. . Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2000. He was born on August 29 in Tenoji district in Osaka City, Japan. He graduated the Yao City Public Secondary School in 1927. It was around ...

* series

Exhibitions in Japan

*Nakaji Yasui (安井仲治展) at Hyōgo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art (兵庫県立近代美術館) and Seibu Contemporary Art Gallery (西武百貨店コンテンポラリーアートギャラリー), 1987 *Nakaji Yasui (安井仲治展) at Watarium, Tokyo, 1993 *Nakaji Yasui 1903–1942, The Photography (安井仲治展) at

Shoto Museum of Art Shoto or Shōtō may refer to: * Shoto (sword), a Japanese sword Places * Shoto-ko, a former name of Songdo Point in North Korea * Shōtō, Shibuya, a residential district of Tokyo, Japan Fictional characters * Shoto Todoroki, a character in th ...

, Tokyo (渋谷区立松濤美術館) and

Nagoya City Art Museum The is located in the city of Nagoya in central Japan. The museum building itself was constructed by Kisho Kurokawa, one of the leading Japanese architects, from 1983 to 1987. Works by the surrealist Kansuke Yamamoto, Sean Scully, and Alexander ...

(名古屋市美術館), 2004 and 2005

References and further reading

* ''déjà-vu'', vol. 12 (featuring Nakaji Yasui and the 1930s (特集「安井仲治と1930年代」), published by Photo Planet 1993, The exhibition catalogue for Nakaji Yasui at Watarium. (No ISBN.) * Kaneko Ryūichi. ''Modern Photography in Japan 1915–1940.'' San Francisco: Friends of Photography, 2001. . *"Nakaji Yasui". Exhibition catalogue. Hyōgo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art and Seibu Contemporary Art Gallery, 1987. (No ISBN.) * ''Nakaji Yasui'' (安井仲治) Nihon no shashinka (日本の写真家, "Japanese photographers"), vol. 9. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1999. *Tucker, Anne Wilkes, et al. ''The History of Japanese Photography.'' New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. . * ''Yasui Nakaji: Modanizumu o kakenuketa tensai shashinka'' (安井仲治　モダニズムを駆けぬけた天才写真家, Nakaji Yasui, genius of modern Japanese photography). Foto Musée. Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1994. . *''Yasui Nakaji shashin sakuhinshū'' (安井仲治写真作品集, "Nakaji Yasui, photographs"). Kyoto, 1942. An unbound portfolio that was privately produced by a group of photographers headed by Bizan Ueda (ostensibly in an edition of 50, although ''hors série'' examples also exist) and never offered for sale. Facsimile edition: Tokyo: Kokushokankōkai, 2005. . The facsimile edition comes with short commentaries in both Japanese and English. (The entire portfolio is reproduced in miniature on pp. 278–84 of ''Nakaji Yasui: Photographer 1903–1942.'') *''Tanjō hyakunen: Yasui Nakaji: Shashin no subete'' (誕生百年：安井仲治写真：写真のすべて) / ''Nakaji Yasui 1903–1942: The Photography.'' 2004. No publisher specified, but presumably one or more of the

(Tokyo), the

(Nagoya), and

Kyodo News is a nonprofit cooperative news agency based in Minato, Tokyo. It was established in November 1945 and it distributes news to almost all newspapers, and radio and television networks in Japan. The newspapers using its news have about 50 millio ...

(Tokyo). Paperback. Also: ''Yasui Nakaji shashinshū'' (安井仲治写真集) / ''Nakaji Yasui: Photographer 1903–1942.'' Tokyo: Kyodo News, 2004. . Hardback. The catalogue for the Shoto/Nagoya exhibition of 2004/2005; text in both Japanese and English. Despite their different titles, the two books seem to be virtually identical.

External links

with sample photographs

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yasui, Nakaji 1903 births 1942 deaths Japanese photographers People from Osaka Street photographers