TOSHIO SHIBATA
Japanese
Toshio Shibata was born in Tokyo in 1949. At the
age of 16, Shibata studied to be a painter and experi-
mented in other media such as printmaking. He later
trained as a graphic artist, earning a Bachelor of Fine
Arts degree from the Tokyo National University of
Fine Art and Music in 1972 and a Master of Fine
Arts degree in 1974. After completing his studies in
Tokyo, Shibata was awarded a Fellowship from the
Ministry of National Education and Dutch Culture
to study printmaking in depth at the Royal Academy
in Ghent. While in Belgium, Shibata came across the
Aperture monographEdward Weston: The Flame of
Recognition, and he was moved deeply by the direct,
compelling powers of Weston’s photographs. Fol-
lowing up on his initial attraction to the imagery,
Shibata began reading Weston’s daybooks. His inter-
est in photography became decisive, and in 1979,
Shibata abandoned printmaking to devote himself
to working in the medium. Practicing a style akin to
Weston’s, his compositions are visually luxurious,
with rich tonality and contrast, yet in Shibata’s
photographs, there is an undeniable measure of
social commentary that underscores his subject mat-
ter. Working with a large-format camera, Shibata
has retained the strong graphic sense of his printmak-
ing, enabling him to accentuate tensions he sees in the
landscape through an imagery that is hyper-real, in
which sharp focus pushes every facet of the composi-
tion into startling clarity.
In an essay entitled ‘‘Crossing over the Desert’’
from Aspects of Contemporary Photography (Ka-
wasaki Museum: Kawasaki, 1995), Masafumi Fuka-
gawa discusses two tendencies in contemporary
Japanese landscape photography. The first, in which
photographs are described as ‘‘constructions,’’ refers
to scenes that are either imposed on the landscape by
the photographer, or else are created entirely in the
studio. The second tendency, known as the ‘‘strange
landscape,’’ is one practiced by Shibata and by his
contemporary, Jun Morinaga. In Shibata’s photo-
graphs, the human relationship with nature is scruti-
nized by the residue left in contact zones—bridges,
dams, barriers, nets, erosion mats. As the ever-
shrinking natural resources in Japan are strained to
accommodate its large population and expanding
economic development, the tension between the arti-
ficial and the natural in the landscape increases expo-
nentially. Man-made structures designed in attempt
to contain the landscape, although intricate and
beautiful, are nevertheless alien forces imposed on a
natural environment. Shibata’s photographs bear
witness to this shift in contemporary Japanese terrain
by exploring the landscape as a ‘‘man-scape.’’
In 1983, Shibata began work on a body of land-
scape photographs entitledQuintessence of Japan.
Typical of Shibata’s compositions is the enormous
wealth of detail in photographs such asKashima
Town, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan (1990). The
image is a large format gelatin silver print of a
waterfall. Each leaf on the large tree in the upper-
left hand corner of the image is carefully and graph-
ically defined. Floating branches change the flow of
the water at two places in the view. The course of
the waterfall is as clear as if it had been combed.
And, as always in Shibata’s photographs, man’s im-
pact on the environment is illustrated by the evi-
dence of interference in the landscape—here, a
brick dividing wall rises incongruously out of the
foliage. There is a strong sense of something awry in
the landscape, and by consequence, in its depiction.
Though Shibata carries the contemplative tran-
quility of traditional Japanese landscape painting
into the photograph, and nature is not conspicuously
marred—the constructions he photographs are in
fact designed to preserve it—these constructions, in
contrast to the lush earth, have an extraterrestrial
and thus subliminally monstrous appearance. They
really don’t belong in the scene, but there is no escape
from them—they are an evil necessity (Kuspit 1993).
The photograph entitled Onokami Village,
Gunma Prefecture, Japan(1994) depicts a quilted
erosion mat covering a hillside gully. There is an
interesting play of contrasts in the photograph
between the pattern of the woven mat, which catch-
es the shadows in its recesses, and the dark leaves
of the trees behind. The erosion mat is evocative of
many things—a road, a river, or a snake that has
shed its skin. Once again, Shibata indicates the
permanent results of urban impact on the land-
scape in the form of a structure: in this case, a
concrete dam in the uppermost background of
the photograph.SHIBATA, TOSHIO