
Three Japanese Women Photographers Who Change the History of Photography
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
8-3-2025 2:40 AM
Description
Kelly McKormick, Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Three Japanese Women Photographers Who Change the History of Photography
How does our understanding of the history of Japanese photography and of modern Japan change when we learn about three moments in the twentieth century when women photographers shaped current events with their cameras? Beginning with the writer Hayashi Fumiko, who was sent to China as an embedded writer (jūgun sakka) for the Japanese Ministry of Information’s “Pen Squadron”, I explore the role that women photographers played in supporting and legitimizing Japanese colonialism and armed conflict in the 1930s and 1940s.
Then, I introduce Akahori Masuko, one of the photographers who represented the “women of the new workplaces” in the postwar period – those who sought to break down the barriers to women working in the public sphere and recast jobs that had been gendered male as open to all. Through her work photographing prison laborers on an industrial dam project and inmates at a women’s prison, Akahori’s social documentary photographs expanded the boundaries of the photographable in the 1950s.
I conclude with the work of Matsumoto Michiko, photographer of the Japanese women’s liberation movement who developed a practice of portraiture to counter the spectacularization of women’s bodies in the mass media. Matsumoto redefined portraiture as an honorary and liberating way to envision community.
The history of the Japanese feminist political revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s have until recently been written without considering what photography did to make these movements possible. Making these women’s stories and photographs known allows for a course correction: a history of Japan and photography that fills in absences so that they may not be translated into current-day repetitions. What is more, exploring underutilized archives and source materials, this new history of vernacular Japanese photography, and indeed of worldwide photographic culture, is one that argues not merely for the inclusion of excluded figures, such as the women photographers I introduce. It shows how the writing of history itself must be examined for the ways it has systematically supported exclusions of experience in favor of canonical narratives. Using Japan as its focal point, this project writes a gendered analysis that intervenes in research on the international cultures of photojournalism, mass media, and photography as a gendered practice.
Kelly Midori McCormick co-created the website ""Behind the Camera: Gender, Power, and Politics in the History of Japanese Photography"" and contributed to the book I'm So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers From the 1950s to Now.
Relational Format
Conference proceeding
Recommended Citation
McKormick, Kelly, "Three Japanese Women Photographers Who Change the History of Photography" (2025). Women of Photography: A 24-Hour Conference-a-thon Celebrating International Women’s Day 2025. 9.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/womenofphotography/2025/schedule/9
Three Japanese Women Photographers Who Change the History of Photography
Kelly McKormick, Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Three Japanese Women Photographers Who Change the History of Photography
How does our understanding of the history of Japanese photography and of modern Japan change when we learn about three moments in the twentieth century when women photographers shaped current events with their cameras? Beginning with the writer Hayashi Fumiko, who was sent to China as an embedded writer (jūgun sakka) for the Japanese Ministry of Information’s “Pen Squadron”, I explore the role that women photographers played in supporting and legitimizing Japanese colonialism and armed conflict in the 1930s and 1940s.
Then, I introduce Akahori Masuko, one of the photographers who represented the “women of the new workplaces” in the postwar period – those who sought to break down the barriers to women working in the public sphere and recast jobs that had been gendered male as open to all. Through her work photographing prison laborers on an industrial dam project and inmates at a women’s prison, Akahori’s social documentary photographs expanded the boundaries of the photographable in the 1950s.
I conclude with the work of Matsumoto Michiko, photographer of the Japanese women’s liberation movement who developed a practice of portraiture to counter the spectacularization of women’s bodies in the mass media. Matsumoto redefined portraiture as an honorary and liberating way to envision community.
The history of the Japanese feminist political revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s have until recently been written without considering what photography did to make these movements possible. Making these women’s stories and photographs known allows for a course correction: a history of Japan and photography that fills in absences so that they may not be translated into current-day repetitions. What is more, exploring underutilized archives and source materials, this new history of vernacular Japanese photography, and indeed of worldwide photographic culture, is one that argues not merely for the inclusion of excluded figures, such as the women photographers I introduce. It shows how the writing of history itself must be examined for the ways it has systematically supported exclusions of experience in favor of canonical narratives. Using Japan as its focal point, this project writes a gendered analysis that intervenes in research on the international cultures of photojournalism, mass media, and photography as a gendered practice.
Kelly Midori McCormick co-created the website ""Behind the Camera: Gender, Power, and Politics in the History of Japanese Photography"" and contributed to the book I'm So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers From the 1950s to Now.
Comments
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