Casa Asia and Japan Foundation, Madrid participates in this year’s PhotoEspaña in Barcelona and Madrid to host the conference “Contemporary Japanese Photography: a gender perspective ” by chief curator of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Michiko Kasahara.

Throughout the history of art and photography have been different visions of the ideal of feminine beauty and the concept of eros, but always from a male point of view, being this rigid male vision which has been fixed as the classical canon. Inside the development of the role of women has had on society, how do contemporary photography expresses the way it represents the feminine and masculine? This lecture, trying to illustrate this point in contemporary Japanese art, will expose the representative example of a new reading of the image genre photography by Yasumasa Morimura. In addition, the lecture will consider the work of photographer Rieko Shiga, who has worked on the passions of man and the hope that underlies the tsunami disaster that took place last March in the Tohoku region.

Led by Michiko Kasahara

Sociology and photography are closely linked in the training base of Michiko Kasahara, BA in Sociology from the Meiji Gakuin University (Tokyo, Japan) and formed as a photographer in the Columbia College Chicago (USA). He served as curator of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Tokyo, and was guest curator of the exhibition ‘Out of the Ordinary / Extraordinary “, organized by the Japan Foundation in 2004. In addition, in 2005 was part of the committee for the Japan Pavilion at the 51 th edition of the Venice Biennale. Among his works as a Bulwark Against Photography was, Seikyusha, Tokyo (2002), and has won major awards such as The Photographic Society of Japan Award (2002).

Simultaneous translation from Japanese to Spanish.