Tanno Akira

Tanno Akira (1925-2015) was an esteemed photographer and member of the influential postwar Japanese photo agency VIVO. In revisiting the long-overlooked works of Okanoue Toshiko and Imai Hisae, members of the same generation, we have been adopting fresh perspectives on the Japanese photography scene up to the 1960s, and aim to reinterpret Tanno in the context of his time.
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Tanno first showed Circus in 1957 in the group exhibition Eyes of Ten at Matsuya Ginza, Tokyo, organized by the photo critic Fukushima Tatsuo. Tanno was already highly regarded for his stage photos of foreign musicians and ballet dancers touring Japan, but his Japanese circus images adopted a new direction, conveying a distinctly local atmosphere with a hint of Western influence. This exhibition also brought together future members of VIVO, the seminal independent photographic agency established in 1959, including Hosoe Eikoh, Tomatsu Shomei, Narahara Ikko, and Kawada Kikuji, heralding a new era in postwar photography. Tanno’s mid-1960s series, later titled Heroes of the Underground, focused on workers at the Takashima coal mine in Nagasaki Prefecture, powerfully depicting their grueling labor amid punishing working conditions. Whether the setting was circuses or coal mines, Tanno’s photography consistently presented people’s lives as dramas unfolding on the stage of human existence. In 1972, he became the secretary of the Japan Realist Photographers Association, carrying on the social-realist movement spearheaded by Domon Ken, and in 1976, he founded the public open-call exhibition Shiten (Perspectives), becoming a mentor to emerging photographers. In his role as chairman of the Copyright Committee of the Japan Professional Photographers Society, Tanno also contributed to reform of Japan’s copyright laws in 1970. by TODA Masako, Photography Historian