Béton Visual Culture Center presents the exhibition "Japan. Different World", which demonstrates more than 70 original works of Japanese photo studios of the late 19th century, prints, sculptures, unique authentic samurai armor and kabuto suji helmet.
To this day, one of the most popular trends in photography and filmmaking remains the fixation and demonstration of so-called "exotics", i.e. views and subjects from "different" worlds. For the Europeans, who were the inventors and first users of photography, these "different" worlds were first the geographical South, which was subjectively "closer" to Europe, and later the more distant and mysterious East.
Japan existed in complete isolation for two centuries. Only in the 19th century did the "unseen archipelago" open up to the world. It was photography that symbolized Japan's emergence from isolation. It gave foreigners an opportunity to look at a new exotic country, and the Japanese - not only to tell the guests about their culture, life, manners and customs, but also to demonstrate how quickly they master the technical achievements of Western civilization.
The exhibition features unique hand-colored photographs. Natural landscapes, architectural objects, scenes reflecting Japanese life and crafts, samurai, monks, sumo wrestlers, geishas, tea-house dwellers, actors - thanks to a large set of preserved photos, the 21st century viewers will be able to see what so impressed and moved everyone who came to Japan in the 19th century.
Traditional color prints of ukiyo-e - Japanese woodblock prints, which were a kind of predecessor of photography, will be a decoration of the exposition. The name of the genre is translated from Japanese as "pictures of the changing world". The prints depicted popular kabuki theater actors, "bijin-ga" ("pictures of beauties"), historical motifs and landscapes. The ukiyo-e subjects presented at the exhibition are in one way or another related to the art of photography.
Authentic objects from the Land of the Rising Sun will also complement the exhibition. All this will allow viewers to see and feel the details of a world far away, that is unalike to everything else.
The experience of the East, including Japan, had a strong influence on the development of new trends in art: on Impressionism, which became the first expressed alternative to the "big styles", and later - on Post-Impressionism. With the development of cinema, computer games, and virtual reality, the impact of Eastern culture on European culture continued to grow. Such phenomena as cyberpunk, steampunk, fantasy genre and others represent their own interpretation of essentially the same amazing Eastern phenomenon - the combination of traditions of deep antiquity with the paradigm of high technology.
