Rikkoh Nakamura - Nude: Aesthetic Pursuit - 1970

Nude: Aesthetic Pursuit

Rikkoh Nakamura
Hyoron Shinsha/1970/Japanese/115*175*15

Naked Nude: Its Aesthetic Pursuit is a collection of works by Japanese photographer Tatsuyuki Nakamura (1912-1995). Born in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture, he moved to Tokyo for higher education and attended the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (now Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music). After graduation, he became an art teacher of drawing and painting and taught at a primary school in Shinagawa Ward for nearly 10 years. During his time as a teacher, he took up photography when he bought a parrette at a low price, and after the war ended in 1947, he quit teaching and became in charge of photography at the GHQ Education Centre, where he began his photographic career in earnest. It was around this time that he also began creating nude works, which were featured in a number of various camera magazines, and in the 1950s his nudes of actress Michiko Hamamura caused a great sensation. For Nakamura, who had originally specialised in realistic painting, nudes were a way of removing ‘eros’ and depicting ‘figurative beauty’, and his style, which was novel at the time, established him as a firm photographer of nudes. This collection of his work was published in 1970 and contains black-and-white nudes selected from 20,000 contact images.