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)

HORIZON - The Border (2009 (Printed 2011))

Inkjet print on paper mounted on aluminium, 3 parts
53.4 x 41.5 cm each (ref:Ta0013)

HORIZON - The Border (2003 (Printed 2011))

Inkjet print on paper mounted on aluminium, 2 parts
54.4 x 83.6 cm (each 54.4 x 41.8 cm) (ref:Ta0015)

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