Ginza (Ginza Palace)
(1932)
Medium
gelatin silver photograph
Measurements
11.2 × 8.3 cm (image) 12.5 × 10.0 cm (sheet)
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
© Michiko Yamawaki
Gallery location
Special Exhibitions Gallery
Ground Level, NGV International
About this work
Yamawaki Michiko and her husband spent two years studying at the Bauhaus art school in Dessau, Germany from 1930, returning to Japan in 1932. Taken in the summer of 1933, Yamawaki’s Tokyo street scenes show the influence of the Bauhaus vision, while highlighting the differing roles of women at a time of great social change. We see mothers carrying children, women in kimono holding parasols, and moga (modern girls) wearing knee-length dresses and Western-inspired clothes. Yamawaki used details from twenty-one of these photographs to create her bustling modernist photomontage Melted Tokyo, published in Asahi Camera magazine in 1933.
Artwork Details
Place/s of Execution
Ginza, Japan
Inscription
stamped in red ink (in Japanese characters) on reverse l.l.: (artist’s seal)
Accession Number
2024.638
Department
International Photography