Dates ｜April 5 – 27, 2025
Venue｜MEM  map
Hours｜13:00 – 19:00 ( close from 14:00 to 17:00 on 26th January due to Talk event.)
Closed | Monday (Open if Monday is a public holiday, closed the following weekday)
Phone | 03-6459-3205
Organized with the support of the Masahisa Fukase Archives

Private Scenes is a series in which Masahisa Fukase photographed himself in various locations, holding the camera at arm’s length to capture fragments of his own body within the frame. It is considered one of his major works from his later years. The series was first shown in 1990 at the Ginza Nikon Salon in an exhibition titled Private Scenes—Letters from Journeys. It began with landscapes taken during his travels to cities such as Paris, London, Brussels, and Antwerp and later shifted to scenes captured while wandering the streets of Tokyo. In 1992, he exhibited Private Scenes   ’92 at the Ginza Nikon Salon, showing over 450 prints selected from various series, including Private Scenes, Buku-Buku, Bero-Bero, and Hibi. Not long after this exhibition, Fukase was severely injured in an accident and remained in long-term care until his passing in 2012.

For Private Scenes ’92, Fukase shot with a Konica Big Mini and photographed without looking through the viewfinder and capturing his own face, hands, or feet within the frame. He then painted directly over the gelatin silver prints with watercolor, sometimes adding words to complete the works. His uninhibited, vibrant brushstrokes appear to overlay his photographic prints with impulses that radiate from within, as though coloring an internal landscape onto reality. In its focus on street scenes and urban landscapes, the series is reminiscent of Walking Eye, which Fukase presented in the 1980s. However, by incorporating his own body—his face, for example—into the frame, the relationship between Seeing and Being Seen, as well as between Photographer and Subject, becomes entangled and unstable. This dynamic is further complicated by the gestural act of hand-coloring, which layers Fukase’s gaze and bodily presence onto the image in ways that unsettle what is seen. This exhibition is composed primarily of these hand-painted photographs.

The biopic Ravens, starring Tadanobu Asano as Masahisa Fukase, will be released nationwide on March 28. Blending fact and fiction, the film portrays the lives of Fukase and his wife, Yōko, played by Kumi Takiuchi. We hope you’ll have the chance to see the movie and the exhibition.

【Movie】

Movie “Ravens”Screening from March 28 at TOHO CINEMAS CHANTE, Shinjuku Musashino Theater, Eurospace, etc.
Director / Writer : Mark Gilll
Stars : Tadanobu Asano, Kumi Takiuchi, Kanji Furutachi, Sosuke Ikematsu

【New Publications】

Yoko
Supervision by Tomo Kosuga
Book design: Chikako Suzuki
Bilingual (Japanese and English)

Homo Ludens
Supervision by Tomo Kosuga
Book Design: Bunpei Yorifuji, Haru Kakiuchi
Bilingual (Japanese and English)