Literature

Masahisa Fukase’s grandfather and father were both studio photographers, running a successful commercial portrait studio in a small town on the island of Hokkaido in Northern Japan. Fukase cut his teeth working in the darkroom, becoming proficient with roll film and with view cameras, using full and half plate film. He also developed the excellent skills in lighting and printing that can be appreciated through the range of printing styles he utilised with toners and different papers. His printing has a ‘style’ or signature that is quite easy to recognise.

There is one body of work, made between 1971 and 1989, that demonstrates Fukase’s extraordinary ability to master studio lighting and photography. It is unique, as all his other projects were shot outside at various locations such as Shinjuku and of course around the country during his Ravens project. The project was called Family and became an almost bi-annual tradition in which Fukase posed his mother and father and various other family members in a series of group portraits. Fukase appears in many of the pictures and, for unknown reasons, he often included a semi naked dancer or actress to accompany his family as they sat for their portraits in the studio.

In Family Fukase disrupts the traditional family portrait by using various antics to make us ‘look again’. Whether it is that the family have their backs to us or a missing member is represented by a childhood portrait or a picture of his ageing father clad only in a simple loin-cloth – Fukase asks us to reconsider what the family portrait should or could be. His playful and subversive smile in some of the photographs hint at his mischievous character, but one is also aware of his diligence and commitment to making a series of works that was to become a project lasting over 10 years.