Hiroji Kubota Photographer

Overview

Hiroji Kubota Photographer is a retrospective exhibition composed of two parts: platinum prints of black-and-white photographs made from 1963 to 1989, featured at Aperture Gallery until January 14th, 2016; and dye-transfer prints made from 1978 to 2003, featured on the ground floor of Aperture Gallery’s building at Sundaram Tagore Gallery until January 5th, 2016. This exhibition is in conjunction with the publication Hiroji Kubota Photographer (Aperture, 2015), the first comprehensive survey of veteran Magnum photographer Hiroji Kubota’s work.

Spanning over fifty years of his extraordinary life and world travels, Hiroji Kubota Photographer encompasses the best images from Kubota’s life’s work. Rooted in his experience of Japan, ravaged by destruction and famine at the end of World War II, Kubota’s work is characterized by a desire to find beauty and honor in human experience. The exhibition includes examples of all his key bodies of work, including photographs from his many extended trips throughout China, Burma, the U.S., North and South Korea, and his home country, Japan. As Elliott Erwitt states in his preface to the book, Kubota “has produced a remarkable view of our world.”

About the Artist

Hiroji Kubota (born in Tokyo, 1939) began his career assisting Magnum photographers René Burri, Burt Glinn, and Elliott Erwitt on their visit to Japan in 1961. Becoming a Magnum photographer himself, he produced major bodies of work on the United States, Japan, China, North and South Korea, and Southeast Asia. His numerous publications include China (1985), From Sea to Shining Sea: A Portrait of America (1992), Out of the East: Transition and Tradition in Asia (1997), and Japan (2004). His work has been exhibited around the world, including at the International Center of Photography, New York; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and Fuji Art Museum, Tokyo.