fantasy world full of chimeras and frightening crea-
tures inspired by medieval Western churches, gar-
dens, or New York City’s Wax Museum. In a
similar vein, Kawada has also photographed the
fantastical architecture and objects in the Sacred
Grove of Bomarzo outside Rome, the Tiger Balm
Garden in Hong Kong, and the Boboli Gardens in
Florence. With these series, Kawada established his
style and his photographic vision by accentuating
contrasts that play with various levels of symbolism.
He also evokes a perverted world where the sacred
becomes grotesque, the grotesque allowing Kawada
to evoke a parallel between Japan and the Occident
and to set up an inquiry about the relationships
between the cultures in the history of these forms.
This theme was explored, but in a more deeply
psychological manner, in his seriesLos Caprichosof
1986 in which Kawada explored and extracted the
dementia and madness hidden in the boredom and
the banality of daily life. In 1996, Kawada received
two major awards for his entire work, the annual
award from the Photographic Society of Japan and
an award from the International Photographic Fes-
tival of Higashikawa.
Beginning in 1999, Kawada employed digital means
to compose photo-montages as well as exploring digi-
tal photography and new printing techniques. These
manipulated pictures portray different objects related
to consumer society, like cars (Car Maniac, 1998) or
the urban environment. With his collectionEureka,he
devised an imaginary city using elements such as
monuments or highways extracted from other cities,
continuing his interest in the incoherence, the instabil-
ity, and loss of landmarks of modern life. His images
are also meditations on the hidden face of society in
which he establishes a parallel between the city and the
behavior of city dwellers. According to Kawada, the
city, it plan, and the restraints of urbanism are the best
reflection of our consciences.
ThomasCyrilSeealso:Digital Photography; Domon, Ken; Hosoe,
Eikoh; Photography in Japan
Biography
He was born in 1933 in Ibaragi Prefecture. He graduated
from the Department of Economics, Rikkyo University,
- He was a staff photographer at the Shinchosha
Publishing Company, 1955–1959. He turned freelance
in 1959. After leaving Shinchosha, he organized and co-
founded the VIVO photographers agency with E. Hosoe,
S. Tomatsu, I. Narahara, and others, 1959. He has since
worked as a freelance photographer. In 1966, he made a
tour of Europe and visited both Europe and Southeast
Asia. He received the Annual Award, The Photographic
Society of Japan in 1996, the Domestic Artist Prize, and
Higashikawa Award at the Higashikawa International
Photography Festival in 1996.Individual Exhibitions
1959 The Sea, Fuji Photo Salon, Tokyo
1961 The Map, Fuji Photo Salon, Tokyo
1968 Sacre ́Atavism, Nikon Salon, Tokyo
1976 Kikuji Kawada Photographs, Shadai Gallery, Tokyo
1984 Nude Museum and Ludwig II Collection, P.G.I., Shi-
baura, Japan
1986 Los Caprichos, Photo Gallery International, Torano-
mon, Tokyo
1995 The Last Cosmology, Tower Gallery, Yokohama,
Japan
1996 The Last Cosmology, Mitsubishi-Jisho Artium, Fukuoka
The Last Cosmology, Higashikawa International Photo-
graphy Festival, Higashikawa, Japan
1998 Car Maniac, P.G.I., Shibaura, Japan
1999 The Globe Theater, Internationale Fototage Herten,
HertenGroup Exhibitions
1957 The Eyes of 10 Photographers, Konishiroku Photo Gal-
lery, Tokyo
1962 Non, Matsuya Department Store, Ginza, Tokyo
1963 Contemporary Japanese Photographs,NationalMuseum
of Modern Art, Tokyo
1974 New Japanese Photography, Museum of Modern Art,
New York
1977 Neue Fotografie aus Japan, Kulturhaus der Stadt,
Graz, Austria
1978 VIVO: Contemporary Photography, Santa Barbara
Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California
1979 Japan: A Self-Portrait, International Center of Photo-
graphy, New York
1982 38 Japanese Photographers, Zeit-Foto Salon, Tokyo
1986 The Works with Polaroid 20 24 , Shibuya Seibu Seed
Hall, Tokyo
Japon des Avant-Gardes 1910–1970, Centre Georges
Pompidou, Paris
1988 8 Japanese Photographers, Photo Gallery International,
Tramonom, Tokyo
1989 Europalia 89, Japan-Belgium, Museum of Photogra-
phy, Charleroi, Belgium
1990 Eye of deja-vu, Heineken Village Gallery, Tokyo
1991 Photographs in Japan 1955–1965, Yamaguchi Prefectural
Museum of Art, Yamaguchi, Japan
Beyond Japan: A Photo Theatre, Barbican Art Gal-
lery, London
Innovation in Japanese Photography in the 1960s,
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo
1995 Works by 25 Photographers in Their 20s, Kiyosato Museum
of Photographic Arts, Yamanashi
Objects, Faces and Anti-Narratives-Rethinking Modern-
ism, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo
Japanese Culture: The Fifty Postwar Years, Meguro
Museum of Art, Tokyo
1998 Realism in Postwar Japan 1945–1960, Nagoya City Art
Museum, Nagoya, Japan
Corridor of the Gaze/Theatrical Tableaux, Tokyo Me-
tropolitan Museum of Photography, TokyoKAWADA, KIKUJI