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Untitled

1987–89, printed 1992
Not on view
In 1987, while recovering from heart surgery, Tomatsu began photographing the flotsam washed up on the beach near his home. Using the black sand as a glittering canvas, the photographs transform colorful bits of trash and seaweed into quiet meditations on mortality, disappearance, and the cyclical nature of life.
Tomatsu came of age in postwar Japan, and his sensibility was shaped by the devastation of World War II. While his photographs often respond to momentous events in Japan’s history—the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. military occupation, the nation’s economic boom—his approach is poetic and allusive rather than strictly documentary.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Untitled
  • Artist: Shomei Tomatsu (Japanese, Aichi, Nagoya 1930–2012 Naha, Okinawa)
  • Date: 1987–89, printed 1992
  • Medium: Silver dye bleach print
  • Dimensions: Image (preferred orientation): 14 in. × 14 1/8 in. (35.5 × 35.9 cm)
    Sheet (preferred orientation): 18 × 22 in. (45.7 × 55.9 cm)
    Mat: 23 × 23 in. (58.4 × 58.4 cm)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1993
  • Object Number: 1993.252.1
  • Rights and Reproduction: © Shomei Tomatsu
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

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Untitled, Shomei Tomatsu Japanese, Chromogenic print
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Untitled
Shomei Tomatsu
1978–90, printed 1992
Untitled, Shomei Tomatsu Japanese, Silver dye bleach print
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Shomei Tomatsu
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1959–60, printed 1990
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