Tokyo, Musashino, Edo: Photographic representation of place and exploring self-identify

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the methods of representing place and the motives of the photographers through the analysis of the work of one specific photographer. Therefore photographs of Tokyo by Tanuma Takeyoshi are analyzed diachronically. Through semantic and institutional analysis, the relation between Tanuma's identity and the place represented is depicted. From the semantic aspect, three photographic works published in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, are analyzed. To make this analysis persuasive, articles in newspapers and magazines by and about him and a series of photographic works by various photographers including him are investigated. The results can be summarized as follows. Tanuma, who grew up in downtown Tokyo was confused by the rapid changes in the city after the Second World War. He published Musashino in 1974 and presented the natural landscape without people and the cultural landscape such as buildings and statues. While this work emphasizes the ahistorical character of this area, Tokyo no nakano Edo (Edo style lingering in Tokyo, 1982) emphasizes unchangeable human nature by showing people's faces and their way of life. Tokyo no Sengo (Tokyo after the war, 1993), which consists of photographs taken since the 1940s and selected by Tanuma in the 1990s is an educational history. The transformation of the meaning which Tanuma attaches to Tokyo is not only the product of his own imagination, but parallel to the contemporary discourse on Tokyo and the idea of "home" in general. On the one hand Tanuma's identity was formed by producing photographic works and being a photographer, and on the other hand the world of photographers gave him a social identity by recognizing him as a photographer.