The sixth edition of Kyotographie, Kyoto's annual celebration of local and international photography, which opens in venues across the city on April 14, is titled "Up." This year, the collection of exhibitions address France-Japan relations: the 160th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations and the 60th anniversary of Paris and Kyoto's sister city covenant.
It also coincides with the 50th anniversary of France's civil unrest in May 1968, one early rallying point in the ongoing campaign for recognizing issues affecting marginalized societal demographics, including students, workers, women and immigrants. In Kyotographie, 15 headlining artists and a number of satellite events, exhibitions and workshops have been assembled for a festival-focused invitation to warm up to, stand up to and rise up to sensitive, generational, social, racial, ethnogeographic and political issues emerging from manifold contemporary photographic perspectives.
Highlights from the international contingent include black-and-white documentations from Claude Dityvon's (1937-2008) "Mai 1968: La Realite a Reve," which captured crowd scenes of energy and incitement during France's pivotal uprisings, oscillating between revolutionary fervor and anarchy. Lauren Greenfield's Japan premier is marked with her quarter-century inquiry titled "Generation Wealth," in which she photographed and filmed the lives of the nouveau-riche and others in parts of America, China and Russia who sought to define themselves and their families through the insatiable pursuit of material wealth and fame. Her work is anticipated to have a nostalgic effect for Japanese audiences given this economy's long burst bubble.