This major retrospective represents the first comprehensive overview of the work of Shomei Tomatsu (born 1930, Nagoya) and bears witness to his status within the Japanese post-war avant-garde and his role in the development of modern Japanese photography.

With approximately 240 photographs, the exhibition shows all Tomatsu’s major groups of works, for example “Nagasaki 11.02” – the shattering essay on the effects of the atom bomb and the lives of the survivors – and “Chewing Gum and Chocolate”, his first attempt at capturing the far-reaching Americanisation in Japan after the war – with the huge dichotomy between the military threat and the cultural attraction, the seduction of Hollywood glamour. Shomei Tomatsu takes us from traditional Japan to the Japan of economic success and shows the effects of these economic, political and cultural changes. The father of modern Japanese photography, one of the most eloquent Japanese artists of the past half-century, influenced several generations of Japanese photographers with his approach, his documentary-based, lyrical and symbolic way of seeing things.

The exhibition is generously sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, Allan Alcorn, Linda and Jon Gruber, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Bob and Randi Fisher,the Blakemore Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. S. Fisher, Prentice and Paul Sack, Ellen Ramsey Sanger, The Japan Foundation, and Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd.

Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with The Japan Society, New York.

Curators: Sandra S. Phillips, Leon Rubinfien