Shisei Kuwabara

Front cover of Minamata, a collection of Kuwabara's photographs of the effects of mercury poisoning.

Shisei Kuwabara (桑原 史成, Kuwabara Shisei, born 7 October 1936) is a photojournalist best known for his depiction of the effects of mercury poisoning on people in and near Minamata over a period of some forty years.

Kuwabara was born as Fumiaki Kuwabara (桑原史成, Kuwabara Fumiaki) in the village of Kibe (now part of Tsuwano), Shimane Prefecture, Japan.[1] In 1960 he graduated from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Tokyo Photo School (later Tokyo College of Photography).

In the same year Kuwabara started work as a freelance photographer. With a letter of introduction from a journalist with Shūkan Asahi magazine, he visited the director of Minamata Municipal Hospital, Dr Noboru Ōhashi, in July, to ask for permission to photograph. Ōhashi gave him permission for long-term coverage.[2]

Kuwabara's photographs of Minamata were shown in his first solo exhibition, Minamata-byō (Minamata disease), at the Fuji Photo Salon in Tokyo in September 1962. This won the newcomers' award of the Japan Photo Critics Association.[3]

Kuwabara's works have also won an award from Kodansha in 1965, the Photographic Society of Japan's Annual Award in 1971, and the Ina Nobuo Award in 1982.[4]

Since 1997, Tsuwano has had a gallery largely devoted to Kuwabara's work. Until March 2004, this was called the Tsuwano Documentary Photograph Gallery; it was then renamed the Shisei Kuwabara Photographics Museum.

Notes

  1. Birthday: Works by 25 Photographers in their 20s (catalogue of an exhibition held at Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in 1995), p. 89. Place of birth and original name: (in Japanese) CV. Much other information below comes from one or other of these sources.
  2. Start at Minamata: Works by 25 Photographers, pp. 823. This catalogue also presents examples of his early work in Minamata, and a potted CV.
  3. JPCA award: 25 Photographers, p. 89.
  4. Kōdansha award: (in Japanese) 講談社出版文化賞【写真賞】 (過去の受賞者一覧) (list of award winners). PSJ award: (in Japanese) 日本写真協会 過去の受賞者一覧 (PSJ, list of past award-winners). Ina Nobuo Award: (in Japanese) 7回(1982年)伊奈信男賞 (announcement of the 7th Ina Nobuo Award to Shinzō Hanabusa and Kuwabara).

Books by Kuwabara

Other books with works by Kuwabara

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.