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Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film
AXIS Building 2F, 5-17-1 Roppongi,
Minato-ku,
Tokyo, Japan 106-0032   map * 
tel: +81 3 6447 1035     fax: +81 3 6447 1036
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Solo Exhibition by Katsumi Watanabe
by Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film
Location: Taka Ishii Gallery / Photography / Film
Artist(s): Katsumi WATANABE
Date: 23 Aug - 13 Sep 2014

Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film presents an exhibition of works by Katsumi Watanabe, comprising 14 works from the Shinjuku series, which Watanabe shot for many years.

From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, Katsumi Watanabe photographed bar hostesses, drag queens, and gangsters in Shinjuku as a “drifting portrait photographer.” As a drifting photographer, a very unique profession even at the time, he would walk around Shinjuku daily with a camera in hand and wait for someone to ask him to shoot a portrait. He would go home, process and print, and return the next day with prints for his customers. Watanabe’s subjects strike various poses to present themselves and their lives in Shinjuku with confidence. The photographs were quite precious to their subjects, some of whom sent their portraits to families in the country in the place of a letter.

In the 1970s, when inexpensive automatic cameras began to spread, it became difficult for Watanabe to make his living as a drifting photographer. Watanabe, however, continued to produce a massive archive of images of Shinjuku and its inhabitants. In addition to portraits, he shot children playing in back alleys, a riot in front of Koma Gekijo, and the piles of empty cans accumulating on Shinjuku’s street corners. As one of its inhabitants, Watanabe provided an insider’s view of the transformation of Shinjuku.

Katsumi Watanabe was born in 1941 in Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture, and passed in 2006. Watanabe attended a part time course at Iwate Prefectural Morioka Daiichi High School while working as an assistant at the Morioka Office of the Mainichi Shimbun, where he developed an interest in photography. After graduating from high school, he moved to Tokyo and worked at the Tojo Photo Studio, where he learned studio photography. In 1965, Watanabe became a “drifting photographer” and shot portraits on the street of Shinjuku. He charged 200 yen for one print with three shots. In 1973, he published Shinjuku Guntoden 66/73. In 1974, his work was included in the “Fifteen Photographers Today” exhibition at the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art and began receiving great acclaim. After he quit shooting as a drifting photographer, he worked various jobs such as selling roasted sweet potatoes on the street and running a portrait studio. He then became a freelance photographer and shot all over the world, but continued to shoot Shinjuku all the while.

-Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film

Image: © Katsumi Watanabe
Courtesy of the artist and Taka Ishii Galley Photography / Film

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