Curator

  • Art Institute Chicago
  • Harvard art museum
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A work made of gelatin silver print.

Torso as Ancient Sculpture

1938

Osamu Shiihara Japanese, 1905–1974

Japan

Shiihara Osamu carefully cropped and blocked an image of a female nude into a broken torso that resembles a Greek sculptural fragment. Responding to the lively discourse among Japanese artists around European avant-garde art, Shiihara produced a series of Surrealism-inspired photographs focused on the female figure. These images challenged expectations in imperial Japan that photogra-phy ought to render the human body with documentary realism, leading critics to describe the work as subversive and “modern.”

Gelatin silver print

Photography and Media