Shōji Ueda

Shōji Ueda (植田 正治 , Ueda Shōji , 27 March 1913– 4 July 2000) was a photographer of Tottori, Japan best known for his distinctive, dreamlike black-and-white images with staged figures, taken on the Tottori sand dunes. The term Ueda-chō (Ueda-tone) has been used to refer to his cool and mysterious atmospheric style.

Ueda began using posed figures and objects in his photographs in 1939, but would be forced to cease his production due to Japan's participation in World War II. His surreal Sand Dune series, of which the first images were published 1949, was overshadowed by the predominance of social realism, a major trend in Japanese post-war photography.

His oeuvre was reconsidered by critics in 1971 after the publication of the widely-appreciated photobook Warabe Goyomi (Children the Year Round), containing images of children which masterfully balanced social realism and the playfulness of Ueda's posed pictures. Since the 1970s, his work has won him international renown, and in 1995 the Ueda Shōji Museum of Photography was inaugurated.

Throughout the entirety of his life, Ueda remained deeply attached to his native San'in region, and in particular his hometown of Sakaiminato.

Ueda Shōji was born to a merchant family in the port town of Sakaiminato, Tottori prefecture, on the western coast of the Sea of Japan. As a teenager, he showed interest in being a painter, but he started taking photographs instead after his father gave him his first camera when he was fifteen.: 62 

He joined a local photography club, the Yonoga Photography Circle, in 1931. Here, he learned about "art photography", which promoted a pictorialist style, popular amongst amateurs of photography in Japan at that time.: 190  He was particularly influenced by the pictorialist photographer Shiotani Teikō, his mentor. Ueda oversaw an important publication of Shiotani's work in 1975.: 190 

Ueda soon also became interested in shinko shashin or new photography, which looked to the European avant-gardes. Ueda discovered in the pages of the British magazine Modern Photography the work of André Kertész, Man Ray, Emmanuel Sougez and more.: 9  He notably retained the photographers' spirit of experimentation, which inspired him to create photograms, play with perspectives and toy with the framing of his images as he began to develop his own style.: 9 

During the year 1931, Ueda spent three months in Tokyo studying at the Oriental School of Photography, founded by the Oriental Photo Industry Company, the first business in Japan to produce photographic paper and material.: 10  His first professional photographic endeavor was the opening of a portrait studio in 1932, the Ueda Shashinjō. Ueda's business did well, but as time passed, he wanted to dedicate more time to his artistic photographic activity. Ueda's wife, Shiraishi Norie, whom he married in 1935, was supportive of him and took it upon herself to hire other photographers to take over his role at the studio.: 10 

From 1933 onwards, Ueda participated regularly in photography contests organized by magazines such as Asahi Camera. He also co-founded the Chūgoku Photographers Group, alongside Ishizu Ryōsuke, Masaoka Kunio, and Akira Nomura, which aimed to develop a modernist photography distinct from that of the major urban areas.: 191  They organized exhibitions in Nihonbashi, Tokyo so that they might gain recognition in Japan's artistic capital.: 10 

Ueda's 1939 photograph Shōjo shi tai (Four Girls, Four Positions) was a significant turning point for the artist, marking the beginning of his staged pictures. The panoramic image features four young girls on a sandbank, each of them gazing seriously in a different direction, seemingly indifferent to the others' presence. Their nearly identical forms give rhythm to the empty space. The photo does not contain any singular narrative, rather its mysteriousness allows for ample interpretation.

Around 1940, Japan's involvement in World War II interrupted Ueda's artistic activity. The intensifying war effort brought about the end of free publication and photographic materials grew scarce. Additionally, Sakaiminato, a strategically important port city, was transformed by the presence of the army.: 8  Ueda's photo studio was briefly tasked with taking military portraits, but Ueda did not take on any war reportage or propaganda assignments, contrary to many professional photographers of the time.: 63  Ueda was called to serve in the war effort twice in 1943, but was dismissed both times due to his being malnourished.: 58  Ueda thus never participated in the war, and he would make no reference to it in his photographic works for the rest of his career.: 188 

During the tumultuous period following Japan's defeat, Ueda jumped on new opportunities to create again. He joined Ginryūsha, a Tokyo-based association of Japanese photographers active before the war, and came to know Kuwabara Kineo, editor of the influential photography magazine Camera. Kuwabara proposed that Ueda shoot a series of images of fellow photographer Domon Ken in the Tottori sand dunes, which were published in Camera in September 1949.: 10 

Domon was a champion of the realism movement in Japanese post-war photography. He believed that the photographer's role was to attempt an objective depiction of society and to not divert their attention from social reality. The situation was undoubtedly grim in the years following Japan's surrender as citizens attempted to rebuild after a staggering defeat and adjusted to the American occupation.

Ueda, however, did not take an interest in realism, but rather returned to the staged photography that he had first undertaken in 1939. Art historian Yumi Kim Takenaka aptly describes his work at the time as follows: "Ueda's photographs seem to overflow with pleasure to be able to make his own photography freely again.": 63  There is indeed great joy and playfulness in his posed images, of which the most famous are those in which his wife and young children pose together in a lighthearted, humorous fashion. The barren landscape of the sand dunes lend a surreal quality to the figures, who seem to have appeared there out of thin air.

Ueda's photography, unconcerned by the pursuit of realism, provoked some negative responses from contemporary Japanese critics. It is notable in this context that avid realist Domon himself praised Ueda, calling his compositional style "a delight created entirely by the thoughts and emotions of the artist". Reflecting back later on this period, Ueda wrote:

Contrary to this statement, Ueda did not give up taking photography, but focused his attention on his beloved San'in region, in particular the Izumo area. His photos appeared in numerous photo essay books throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Curator Kaneko Ryuichi posits that these endeavors, which remain overlooked even today, confirmed Ueda's self-identification as a "lifelong amateur photographer", which he would continue to say of himself even after gaining international recognition.: 191  Yumi Kim Takenaka has argued that Ueda maintained his signature mysterious and surreal aesthetic, sometimes called Ueda-chō (Ueda-tone), in the creation of these regional images.: 67 

The 1971 publication of a photographic series entitled Warabe Goyomi (Children the Year Around) brought about Ueda's critical reappraisal in Japan. The series, which he had begun in 1959, primarily included pictures of children from the San'in region during the course of the four seasons. Unlike Ueda's purified sand dune compositions, Warabe Goyomi takes the viewer out of dreamland and into the daily life of the San'in region. There is a sense of social realism: the children are sometimes dirty, disheveled, unsmiling, running amok in streets and alleyways. And yet Ueda's pictures still possess an undeniable artfulness, as well as the charming playfulness of his staged sand dune images. It is impossible to tell if the children were posed, or if Ueda captured them in their element.

Some stark photographs featuring powerful black and white contrasts lead Yumi Kim Takenaka to believe that, despite Ueda's deeming himself a purely "amateur photographer", "Ueda was actually very conscious regarding the trends of the different photographic movements", notably those associated with the radical photo magazine Provoke, which presented the work of Moriyama Daidō and Nakahira Takuma, amongst others.: 64 

Ueda opened a new photography studio in 1972, Ueda Camera, in Yonago, Tottori. This three-story building included a tea parlor on the second floor and a gallery on the third. The building became a hub for local amateur photographers who created their own club, called the U Circle.: 59 

In 1975, Ueda accepted a position as a photography professor at Kyushu Sangyo University, which he held until 1994.: 59 

Ueda flew to France in 1978 to participate in the annual international photography event Les Rencontres d'Arles. From then onwards, Ueda's works were shown regularly in Europe.

Bereaved by the passing of his wife Norie in 1983, Ueda ceased taking photographs for a while.: 10  His son Mitsuru, an artistic director at the time, encouraged him to pick up the camera again.: 10  Ueda subsequently produced the series Dunes: Mode, a series of fashion photographs realized between 1983 and the mid 1990s. These graceful images, instantly recognizable as Ueda's, often feature dapper men, carefully arranged by the photographer against the familiar backdrop of the Tottori sand dunes.

Ueda also experimented with different modes of color photography, as seen in the series Shiroi Kaze (Brilliant Scenes), realized between 1980 and 1981. The images have a gauzy quality, with soft, pastel hues and a lack of sharp focus. To create this distinctive effect, Ueda employed a method that Japanese photographers had used during the Taishō era, when the pictorialist mode flourished. It involved removing the lens filter hood from a single lens of the widely-used Vest Pocket Kodak camera. Ueda wondered what images could be produced if he used this outdated method with the latest, most technologically advanced state-of-the-art color film of the time, FujiColor F-II.

Another series, entitled Genshi Yukan (Illusion), completed between 1987 and 1992, is a departure from his previous work in color photography.[10] Ueda appears to revel in creating rich contrasts of hue, as in the case of several still lives: pomegranates and cherries are presented against an inky, seemingly infinite blue-black background.

Ueda died of a heart attack at 87 years of age on July 4, 2000.

In 1995, the Ueda Shōji Museum of Photography, dedicated to exhibiting and archiving his work, opened in Kishimoto, Tottori prefecture.

The French government honored Ueda with the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 1996. This was followed in 1998 by his receiving of the very first Tottori Prefecture Prefectural Citizen Achievement Award in 1998.

When Ueda passed away in 2000, he left behind a significant archive of unpublished material.[10] Archivists have notably been working on the digitization of Ueda's color negatives retrieved at his birthplace.[11]

In 2015, a retrospective publication was edited, featuring previously unseen works. The publishers were given access to 5000 unpublished photos.[10]

Ueda's works have been acquired by museums in Japan and around the world, including: