Photograph of Photograph
Jiro Takamatsu explored perspective, materiality, absence and presence, light and shadow across a practice including painting, performance, multimedia and sculpture. For Photograph of a Photograph, Takamatsu’s only photographic series, the artist brought his interest in considering the physical properties of an object to the family snapshot, exploring the mental processes that link image and object. In each picture, a snapshot rests on a surface in the artist’s home or studio in such a way that reflections, glare, or shadow obscure its surface thus obscuring its original meaning. The resulting composition, a striking series of geometric tonalities and patterns of light across the glossy surface of the paper, creates an abstract tableau that considers the photographic image more broadly as a container of meaning, of endless possibility. It was this inquiry that drove Takamatsu, who in 1962 wrote, “The function of the object is complete concealment and eternal suggestion,” and later “Fulfillment can be found only in the thing of probability, the void of uncertainty.”
Artwork Details
- Title: Photograph of Photograph
- Artist: Jiro Takamatsu (Japanese, 1936–1998)
- Date: 1973–74
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: Image: 43 5/8 × 35 1/2 in. (110.8 × 90.2 cm)
Sheet: 45 3/4 × 37 5/16 in. (116.2 × 94.8 cm) - Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, Alfred Stieglitz Society Gifts and Mary Solomon Gift, 2025
- Object Number: 2025.136
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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