Provoke (magazine)

''Provoke'' (Purovōku, ), with its subtitle of ''Provocative Materials for Thought''Variously also translated as 'provocative resources for thought', 'provocative materials for thinkers', 'provocative documents for the sake of thought' and 'provocative documents for the pursuit of ideas' (Shisō no tame no chōhatsuteki shiryō ), was an experimental small press Japanese photography magazine founded in 1968 by critic/photographers Kōji Taki and Takuma Nakahira, photographer Yutaka Takanashi, and writer .For the sake of thought: Provoke, 1968–1970
, Museum of Modern Art. Accessed 8 January 2015.Case 4: Provoke
, Art Institute of Chicago. Accessed 8 January 2015. Daidō Moriyama joined with the second issue. ''Provoke'' was "a platform for a new photographic expression", "to free photography from subservience to the language of words", "that stood in opposition to the photography establishment". It was a quarterly magazine that also included poetry, criticism and photographic theory. Provoke has been described as having "lasted for only three issues" but with "profound effect upon Japanese photography in the 1970s and 80s,"Fire and Water – Takuma Nakahira’s For a Language to Come
, Gerry Badger. Accessed 8 January 2015. and is said to have "spread a completely new idea of photography in Japan."

Details

The three issues of ''Provoke'' magazine were published on 1 November 1968, and 10 March and 10 August 1969, each in an edition of 1,000 copies.

The ''Provoke'' manifesto declared that visual images cannot completely represent an idea as words can, yet photographs can provoke language and ideas, "resulting in a new language and in new meanings"; the photographer can capture what cannot be expressed in words, presenting photographs as "documents" for others to read, hence ''Provokes "provocative materials for thought" subtitle.

The visual style of the photographs in ''Provoke'' has been said to be, in Japanese, 'are-bure-boke', translated as 'grainy/rough, blurry, out-of-focus', a style already found in mainstream magazines such as ''Asahi Camera'' and ''Camera Mainichi''. Nakahira and Moriyama had been experimenting with 'are-bure-boke' prior to their involvement in Provoke, and Moriyama's 12-part conceptual project "Akushidento (Accident)" for ''Asahi Camera'' in 1969 took the approach in new directions. There were other comparable radical magazines and groups at the time including ''Geribara 5'', which published three books. ''Asahi Journal'', ''Kikan shashin eizō'' (''The Photo Image'') and ''Design'' also served as platforms for avant garde photography in the 'are-bure-boke' style by Nakahira, Moriyama and others.

On 31 March 1970 the collective published the book ''4. Mazu tashikarashisa no sekai o suterō: Shashin to gengo no shisō'' (First Abandon the World of Pseudo-Certainty: Thoughts on Photography and Language),Also translated as 'First Abandon the World of Certainty'. through Tabata Shoten. A review of the group's activity, it is regarded as the ''Provoke No. 4'' that is mentioned in ''No. 3''. It contains photographs by Moriyama, Nakahira, Takanashi and Taki and text by , Nakahira, Okada and Taki.

All three issues of ''Provoke'' appeared in ''The Open Book'', a traveling exhibition that tracked "the history of the photographic medium in the twentieth century through printed images in book form".

Work from ''Provoke'' was shown in the 2016/2017 touring exhibition ''Provoke: Between Protest and Performance – Photography in Japan 1960/1975'' at Albertina in Vienna, Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, Le Bal in Paris and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Critic Gerry Badger has written that the "legendary Japanese magazine, Provoke, lasted for only three issues, but had a profound effect upon Japanese photography in the 1970s and 80s".

Academic research

The first substantial academic investigation into ''Provoke'' is Chapter 3 of Fabienne Adler's 2009 Ph.D. thesis "First, Abandon the World of Seeming Certainty: Theory and Practice of the 'Camera-Generated Image' in Nineteen-Sixties Japan" (Stanford University). In 2010 a journal article on Daidō Moriyama contextualized that photographer's photographic experimentation of the late 1960s and early 1970s in relation to his contributions to ''Provoke''. Yuko Fujii's 2012 Ph.D. thesis on ''Provoke'' was entitled "Photography As Process: A Study of the Japanese Photography Journal ''Provoke''" (City University of New York). Matthew Witkovsky's chapter "Provoke: Photography Up For Discussion" in the 2016 exhibition catalogue ''Provoke: Between Protest and Performance'' contains new research. An article from 2016 by Gyewon Kim proposes that ''Provoke'' used paper as a metaphor for the city, thereby critiquing the Japanese state's imposition of homogeneous urban planning and design. A lengthy 2017 article in the journal ''History of Photography'' by Philip Charrier argues that Provoke was highly theoretical in orientation. It shows that under the leadership of Taki and Nakahira, and inspired by the early writings on photography by Roland Barthes, the collective set out to create photographic imagery that could escape language and code.

Issues

*''Provoke 1: Shisō no tame no chōhatsuteki shiryō'' = Provoke 1: Provocative Resources for Thought. Tokyo: Purovōku-sha, 1968. With photographs by Nakahira, Takanashi and Taki and text by Takahiko and Taki. Edition of 1,000 copies.
*''Provoke 2: Shisō no tame no chōhatsuteki shiryō'' = Provoke 2: Provocative Resources for Thought. Tokyo: Purovōku-sha, 1969. The theme was Eros. With photographs by Moriyama, Nakahira, Takanashi and Taki and text by Okada. Edition of 1,000 copies.
*''Provoke 3: Shisō no tame no chōhatsuteki shiryō'' = Provoke 3: Provocative Resources for Thought. Tokyo: Purovōku-sha, 1969. With photographs by Moriyama, Nakahira, Takanashi, and Taki and text by Okada and Gōzō Yoshimasu. Edition of 1,000 copies.

Publications reproducing Provoke material

''The Japanese Box: Facsimile Reprint of Six Rare Photographic Publications of the Provoke Era,'' published in 2001 by Edition 7L (Paris) and Steidl (Göttingen),. contains facsimiles of the three issues of ''Provoke'' (as well as Nakahira's ''For a Language to Come'', Moriyama's ''Farewell Photography'' and Nobuyoshi Araki's ''Sentimental Journey'') and a newly edited booklet of explanatory material in English. The ''Box'' (an actual wooden box) was made in an edition of 1500. Does not include texts by Takahiko Okada.

A catalog for the similarly named exhibition, ''Provoke: Between Protest and Performance,'' was published in 2016 by Steidl.. Edited by Diane Dufour, Matthew S. Witkovsky, and Duncan Forbes. It contains photographs from ''Provoke'' and from other photographers including Shomei Tomatsu and Araki, as well as texts from that period and newly written.

''Provoke: Complete Reprint of 3 Volumes'' was published in 2018 by Nitesha. It is a reprint of the three volumes of ''Provoke,'' including all images and all original texts (including those by Takahiko Okada) in Japanese. It also includes a supplemental volume with English and Chinese translations of the original Japanese texts.

Publications about Provoke

*''Provoke.'' Tokyo: Seikyusha, 1996. Mostly text, in Japanese, with some photographs.

Notes

References

1968 establishments in Japan
1969 disestablishments in Japan
Defunct magazines published in Japan
Photography magazines published in Japan
Magazines established in 1968
Magazines disestablished in 1969
Quarterly magazines

{{italic title