NYAB Event - "Japan's Diaries: 1907-2007" Exhibition

"Japan's Diaries: 1907-2007" Exhibition

This event has ended.
At Point of View Gallery
Media: Photography

“Japan’s Diaries: 1907 - 2007” is a new photographic series by French born photographer Amelie Sourget. This project is based on a series of photographs that show the changes of the different cultures of Japan that are frantically trying to hold true to their original customs and traditions in an ever changing world. The idea for this exhibition came from a book that the artist stumbled across at The Old Books Fair here in New York. The book is a manuscript, a diary written by an American woman in 1907 as she was traveling for three months around Japan. On her travels, she documented every day life and the culture of the Japanese she was discovering. At the same time, her brother was photographing the scenes and then had them hand-painted by local Japanese artists.

The images in the book moved Amelie Sourget so much that she felt the need to go to Japan. We were in 2007 and the woman had been there a century ago…in 1907 exactly. She thought she had to go immediately and try to follow the American woman path. To confront the vision of Japan by a woman in 1907 to the one of another woman in 2007. What was more, the woman was American and Amelie is French. Two different appreciations of the same country in an intervalle of a century and by two women coming from different countries. She traveled there in 2007, and all the while, recalled the images she had seen from the book in order to show the changes, but also, the similarities of a society so rich in tradition. The result was a sort of diptych series in which you can actually see the progression of their culture over the past 100 years.

For the exhibition the artist scanned and printed the original images from 1907 so when you view the exhibition you actually have the compare and contrast right in front of you.