Issei Suda, The Tension Between the Ordinary and the Extraordinary

Providing a unique panorama with an undeniable degree of nostalgia, this photo book brings together images of children, streets, and the daily lives of the inhabitants of Tokyo, all captured by Issei Suda. The attention is focused on the gestures, perspectives, postures, and details that render each moment unique. The photographs illustrate the effect of time on an environment undergoing change, and present a reality that sometimes escapes what we see on the surface. Throughout the course of these images, we see the energy that gave birth to the evolution of Japanese society. 

Born in 1940 in the Kanda district, the Japanese photographer Issei Suda captured the markers of Tokyo as an epoch disappeared in front of his eyes. He began working as a documentary photographer in 1967 for the avant-garde theatre group Tenjo Sajiki, and then became an independent photographer in 1971 before his death in 2019. 

A singular approach

Throughout the pages of The Work of a Lifetime – Photographs 1968—2006…, 90 photographs in black-and-white retrace 40 years of his career, immersing the reader in the daily lives of his subjects, often children wandering alone through the streets, mysterious portraits imbued with a quiet power. In the series Fûshi Kaden, the artist draws us into another universe, one of Noh theatre, practiced in the early 15th century and combining art, music, and dance.

According to Ferdinand Brueggemann, historian of photography and director of the Priska Pasquer Gallery in Cologne, ‘what is so special about Suda is this tension between the ordinary and the extraordinary, between tradition and modernity. This precise observation and description, the mystery arising from the inherent tension in these images, make the work that Suda was doing so different from that of other artists in this period.’

The Work of a Lifetime – Photographs 1968—2006… (2011), by Issei Suda is published by Only Photography.