Takuma Nakahira (1938-2015) was an influential photographer who, alongside contemporaries such as Daido Moriyama and Kishin Shinoyama, transformed the world of Japanese postwar photography during the 1960s and ’70s. “Nakahira Takuma: Burn—Overflow” is a retrospective exhibition that brings together a selection of the photographer’s unpublished works at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. In the past, photography exhibitions were not as common as they are today and photographers’ works were instead presented through magazines. The real copies of the magazines on display are a fascinating insight into Nakahira’s earnest pursuit of new forms of expression. In 1977, Nakahira fell into a coma and suffered memory loss. His photographs, which intensely capture the subject almost as if trying to grasp at the threads of his lost memories, and diary entries from this time show that, for Nakahira, photography and living were inseparable from each other. His works paint a portrait of a man who constantly strove to question what photographs could accomplish.

Takuma Nakahira: Burn—Overflow
Dates: February 6 – April 7 (Closed on Mondays except March 25)
Hours: 10:00 – 17:00 (10:00 – 20:00 on Fridays) *Admission until 30 minutes before closing.
The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
https://www.momat.go.jp/exhibitions/556