Dates | March 21 (Sat) – April 12 (Sun), 2026
Venue | MEM map
Hours | 12:00-18:00
Closed | Mondays (Open on public holidays; closed the following day)
Tel | +81 (0)3-6459-3205
Talk Event
Panel Discussion
Speakers | Osamu Kanemura; Susumu Yano (Curator, Setagaya Art Musuem); Junpei Abe (Editor-in-Chief, Kaden hihyō)
Date & Time | March 21 (Sat), 2026, 18:15-
Venue | MEM
Capacity | 20 participants (reservation required)
Fee | ¥1,200
An Archive stream will also be available.
An opening reception will be held from 20:00 to 21:00 following the talk (free admission).
Tickets
In-person attendance | ¥1,200 (online payment; additional ¥24 handling fee applies)
Archive Streaming | ¥1,200
Streaming Period | March 24 – May 31, 2026
Ticket Purchase
Tickets for in-person attendance and archive streaming are available here.
We are pleased to present MEM’s second exhibition of photographs by Osamu Kanemura.
This exhibition marks the first presentation of a group of never-before-shown photographs taken in Beijing, accompanied by a photobook of the same title.
Etsuro Ishihara of ZEIT-FOTO SALON proposed that I photograph the outskirts of Beijing amid the heightened atmosphere of the 2008 Summer Olympics, which I then undertook. The outskirts of Beijing were more desolate than I had expected; they brought to mind the expansive, open landscapes at the foot of Mount Fuji in the film Shôjo geba-geba, directed by Koji Wakamatsu, a pioneering figure in underground cinema (particularly in works set in stark, isolated spaces). The barren expanse at the foot of Mount Fuji in Shôjo geba-geba feels like a vast yet enclosed space without any exterior, in which the protagonists, Hoshi and Hanako, seem trapped within the landscape itself. What we call landscape is something humanity has discovered, yet it confines us within it. Amid the vast landscape at the foot of Mount Fuji, it is I who am being created by the landscape; it is not I who perceives it, but I myself who am seen by it. What the camera captures is a non-subjective landscape that precedes both me and the world, and its very emergence marks the boundary between the two. Hoshi and Hanako are crucified upon the boundary of a barren landscape that belongs nowhere.
The camera is a device that produces landscape; yet perhaps it is humanity that is, in turn, subjected to the very landscape it creates? Photography transforms the world into landscape by enclosing space within a rectangular frame; it unfolds as a continual process of repetition, transposition, and proliferation, through which images settle into layered strata, gradually enveloping the world. In turn, it is humanity that is confined within photography.
Shôjo geba-geba is a film in which landscape turns against us; the landscape that seemed contained within our field of vision comes to confine us. I am nothing more than a part of the landscape. Hoshi and Hanako, crucified in the barren landscape, are nothing more than a part of the landscape itself, and are ultimately subsumed by it. Like Sadao Marukido, the protagonist in the film The Embryo Hunts in Secret, who curls into a fetal position and dies within the enclosed, whitewashed interior of a nondescript apartment, SKELETON GOATS DUST STORMS slowly suffocates in a grassland inhabited by nothing but stray goats.
Osamu Kanemura
Selected Biography
Born in Tokyo in 1964, where he continues to live and work. Since 1992, he has photographed urban landscapes, with over twenty solo exhibitions in Tokyo, New York, and elsewhere. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including New Photography 12 (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1996); Contemporary Photography: Absolute Landscape between Illusion and Reality (Yokohama Museum of Art, 1997); Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d’Arles (2004); the Venice Architecture Biennale (2006); DECODE: Events & Materials—The Work of Art in the Age of Post-Industrial Society (Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, 2019). In recent years, his practice has expanded beyond photography to include video, collage, and drawing, culminating in a comprehensive presentation at TOP 30th Anniversary: State of the Artist: So Far From Now On (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 2025). In 1997, he received the Photographic Society of Japan Newcomer’s Award and the Higashikawa Awards New Photographer Award; in 2000, the Domon Ken Award; and in 2014, the Ina Nobuo Award.
【New Publication】
Osamu Kanemura “SKELETON GOATS DUST STORMS”
Format | 305 x 228 mm, hardcover
Pages | 112, 47 plates
With texts by Osamura Kanemura and Gen Umezu
Language | Japanese and English
Publisher | Mēdeia 2.0 / INDIGO Inc.
Price | Standard Edition ¥ 11,000 (tax included)
Price | Special Edition with signed print ¥33,000 (tax included)
