Seen: Showa 92
Who: Kazuyoshi Usui / profile / website
Where:Zen Foto Gallery, Roppongi
When: October 31 - November 21, 2015 (12- 7pm / closed Sundays and Mondays)
Photographer Kazyoshi Usui has followed up 2011′s Showa 88 with a seamless continuation of luridly vibrant and sexy photographs. Usui’s Japan is populated by pastel gangsters, full-geishaed-out pornstars, flowers upon flowers, snakes, and gigantic Coca Cola signs. Reality is warped by the palette that his Pentax 67 captures- the line between fact and fiction is blurred by intoxicating reds and and baby-blues and subject matter that flips effortlessly from entirely banal to kitschy wonder. Usui is frank regarding the produced nature of his images- he told me that he found some models through a Japanese adult Video Actress agency- but rather than keep things too overly polished he employs a savvy understanding of what could be called a “snapshot aesthetic”.
This show coincides with the publication of his third photobook, Showa 92, which you can order from Zen Foto here.
Zen Foto Books: Online store / tumblr