Artist profile
Taku ARAMASA

HORIZON - Visible Transfiguration ( 2007 (Printed 2012))
OROgraphy (digital-positives) Pictorico TPW100 Film mounted on aluminium
99.7 x 126.5cm (ref:Ta0003)

HORIZON - Visible Transfiguration (2008 (Printed 2012))
OROgraphy (digital-positives) Pictorico TPW100 Film mounted on aluminium
99.5 x 125.5 cm (ref:Ta0004)

HORIZON - Visible Transfiguration (2002 (Printed 2012))
OROgraphy (digital-positives) Pictorico TPW100 Film mounted on aluminium
99.7 x 128.8 cm (ref:Ta0009)
Taku ARAMASA was born in Tokyo in 1936, and lived in north-eastern China as a child. After Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, and the collapse of Manchukuo, he remained in China as a refugee for a further two years. Once back in Japan, he started a career as graphic designer, but turned to photography in the late 1960s.
In 1980 he met his parents, from whom he had been separated, and started work on a photographic contribution to the effort of reuniting Japanese war orphans and their biological parents. This work branched into the photography of people of Japanese descent in Hawaii and South America.
In 2000, having completed what was effectively a grand tour of foreign lands, Aramasa turned his attention to Japan. He recounts how he searched for sites unsullied not only by humans but even by birds. Over the years the HORIZON project has evolved into three separate strands: ‘The Border’, ‘Vegetation’ and ‘Visible Transfiguration’.
Biography
- 1936
- Born Tokyo
- 1960
- Studied at Musashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan
- 1993
- Taught at Musashino Art University, currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan
Selected exhibitions
- 1986
- A Portrait of Japanese Immigrants to South America,Yurakucho Marion, Tokyo
- 1988
- ARAMASA Taku Photographs-The 80th Anniversary of Japanese Immigration to Brazil, Sao Paulo Museum, San Paulo
- 1994
- ARAMASA Taku Photographs: Portraits of Native America, Yuraku-cho Art Forum, Tokyo/Hakata/Nara & Takaoka, Japan
- 2003
- Only Skin Deep - Changing vision of the american self, International Center of Photography, New York
- 2009
- ARAMASA Taku Solo Show: frame & vision-blessing in forest, Tokyo Gallery+Beijing Tokyo Art Projects, Tokyo
- 2012
- ARAMASA Taku Photographs: HORIZON, Tokyo Publishing House/Shigeru Yokota Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
- 2014
- ARAMASA Taku, Annely Juda Fine Art, London