Filmmaker and photographer Dennis Hopper leans against an old wall with his camera sandwiched between his body and the brickwork. Photographer Robert Frank lies sockless on the sand, harmonica in mouth. These celebrities are only two of a very long list of figures from film, art, music and pop culture, both Japanese and foreign, who photographer Kazumi Kurigami has quietly captured.
"Portrait: Kazumi Kurigami" at Gallery 916, places emphasis on an intense relationship between these figures, their personalities and the places they're associated with. In an early photograph, two sets of hands rest across an engraving, signed "William S. Burroughs." The engraved words "look," "perception" and "viewpoint" are instantly recognizable and the show's theme could be encapsulated by these three simple words.
Born in 1936, Kurigami graduated Tokyo College of Photography in 1961 and became a freelance photographer in 1965. During the 1970s and 1980s he directed a string of wildly imaginative commercials for the Parco department store. "This is Film for Parco" had actress Faye Dunaway dressed in black, peeling the shell from a hard-boiled egg. The scene is repeated in his first feature film, "Gelatin, Silver — Love" (2009), where private investigator (Masatoshi Nagase) is tasked with following a mysterious femme fatale (Rie Miyazawa) who, for Nagase's character, proves ultimately lethal.