Since its invention in the early nineteenth century, photography has played a hugely valuable role in family life; nowhere is this clearer than within the pages of the family photo album. A vanishing object in the digital age, its collection of printed photographs freezes significant moments in time: birthdays, graduations, weddings and anniversaries. It also preserves people, often depicted in group portraits, which foster a strong sense of belonging and shared identity between relatives.
However, the family album is definitely not a place where you would expect to come across nude photographs, and particularly not of your parents. But, in 1991, Japanese photographer Fukase Masahisa published a photobook of group family portraits, titled Kazoku, which translates as Family, in which several young women, his mother and father, and even the artist himself, pose nude and semi-clothed for the camera.
Family is, in many ways, a typical family photo album, in which thirty-one black-and-white group portraits have been curated in chronological order. Over the course of twenty years, from 1971 to 1989, Fukase photographed his family – parents, siblings and their partners, nephews and nieces – who posed in assorted groupings inside a studio. Crowded together, and arranged strategically in rows, the family make sure that everyone’s face can be seen; sharing the same slim build and neatly combed black hair, they appear unified.
The first portrait in Fukase’s series features ten members of the family, including small children, who are held by their parents. Kneeling on the floor, sitting on chairs and standing together, these relatives appear as a tight-knit group. The image reflects the importance of the family unit, particularly within Japan’s collectivist culture – exemplified by the fact that historically, the Japanese have laid such emphasis on family that a first name follows a surname.
Moreover, although ideas of the family have changed considerably in recent decades, the concept of ‘ie’, which translates as ‘continuing family’, does still remain. The Japanese have a saying that family members, including parents and grandparents, should live close enough that they can carry over a bowl of hot soup – an idea expressed in Fukase’s portraits which present three generations of his family.
In Fukase’s first photograph, the family surrounds Sukezo; a slender middle-aged man, wearing a casual polo neck and glasses, he smiles comfortably for the camera. Throughout Family, Fukase has placed a defined emphasis on his father, who remains in the same central position in each group portrait. Framed as the head of this family unit, Fukase points to another tradition in Japanese culture – the father has historically been regarded as the breadwinner and receives the utmost respect from his family.
At the same time, the viewer’s attention is also drawn to a semi-naked young woman who stands on the far-left edge of the group. Wearing only a white cotton waist-wrap – an item traditionally worn beneath a kimono – her slightly waved long black hair covers her breasts suggestively though she gazes demurely at the camera. The rest of the group, mostly smiling politely, appear unaware of or unperturbed by her provocative behaviour.
Although Fukase has adopted the format of the family group photograph, images such as this take a subversive turn and raise crucial questions for the viewer: who are these theatrical figures and what is their significance? What was the real relationship between father and son? Was Fukase mocking his father or celebrating him in this satirical family album?
Photography meant more to Fukase’s family than most, as is highlighted by the staged backdrop and pared-down setting for the series; each of the portraits was shot in the family-run Fukase Photographic Studio, located in the small town of Bifuka on the Japanese island Hokkaido. Founded by the artist’s grandfather in 1908, at a time when very few people had access to cameras, the studio soon became popular with families seeking commemorative portraits. Business boomed, and the successful studio was passed on to Sukezo.
Fukase was born in 1934, and from the age of six his parents taught him the family trade, including how to wash and process photographic prints. While he was attending high school, his father also gave him a new portable model of camera, encouraging him to follow in his footsteps. Sukezo hoped, and expected, that Fukase would one day take over the studio; traditionally in the patriarchal culture of Japan, assets and responsibilities are handed down from father to eldest son, and Fukase was therefore the studio’s rightful heir.
However, he noted that he started to bear a ‘grudge’ towards commercial photography and the studio, feeling that his life had, in effect, already been mapped out for him. Aged eighteen, instead of taking over the family business, Fukase moved to Tokyo where he enrolled in the College of Art at Nihon University. Although he joined the Photography Department, he wanted to study a very different style of photography to that practised by his father within the walls of the family-run studio.
Since photography’s arrival in Japan during the 1850s, when it was first adopted by commercial photographers and scholars, the term ‘shashin’ was invented; translated as ‘truth copy’, it stresses the idea that the camera faithfully records people and places. By documenting families on important occasions and capturing celebrations for posterity, Fukase’s father was a photographer in this traditional sense.
Then, towards the turn of the twentieth century Japan saw the arrival of ‘geijutsu shashin’, meaning ‘art photography’, which saw photographers adopt a more expressive, personal and experimental approach to picture-taking. The landscape and nature became popular subjects among photographers who strove to capture visual beauty through their lens. In an essay from 1991, Fukase wrote, ‘I had to choose whether I wanted to be a shashin-shi, a “studio” photographer, or a shashin-ka, an art photographer in the modern sense.’ Turning his back on his family’s profession, Fukase defiantly chose to pursue shashin-ka.
Starting his career as a freelance photographer, Fukase felt compelled to capture those who were closest to him. His first experimental photobook, Yugi [Homo Ludence] (1971), features both his first wife, Yukiyo Kawakami, whom he married and divorced young, as well as his second wife, Yōko Wanibe. For more than a decade, Wanibe, a charismatic stage actress, became Fukase’s primary muse. In the black-and-white series ‘From the Window’ (1974) she is portrayed leaving their house every day and, from the pavement below, looks up at Fukase who was positioned with his camera in an upstairs window. Smiling, shouting and peering out from beneath her transparent umbrella, it’s obvious that Yōko was an active participant, who collaborated with her husband to challenge conventional Japanese portraiture.
Fukase’s beloved cat, Sasuke the Second, was another significant muse for the artist. In countless photographs, he is portrayed as a close companion: Sasuke travels with Fukase on the front seat of a car, his ears pricked up as it speeds along; he peeps out of a partially unzipped holdall bag, watching an elephant in its enclosure at the zoo; he plays in the wet sand at the beach. In many other photographs Sasuke simply stares straight down the lens of the camera, yawning widely: ‘I didn’t want to take photos of cats that looked beautiful or cute, but rather the affection you can see when I appear in their eyes.’
Taking family, including his pet, as his subject matter, it’s obvious that Fukase never quite abandoned his roots in portrait photography, which he used to document his life – albeit in a performative manner. While making a name for himself in Tokyo, Fukase also maintained a strong connection with his home town, regularly making the long thirty-six-hour train journey back to Hokkaido. It was during the 1970s, when his younger brother Toshiteru had taken over the Fukase Photographic Studio family business, that Fukase embarked on Family, which would take him twenty years to complete. Using an old camera which belonged to the business, and gathering his relatives together, Fukase photographed them inside the very studio which he had once rejected.
Early images in Family include Yōko who, as in her individual portraits, poses playfully for the camera; she is the woman whose hair covers her breasts in the first portrait. In 1976, Yōko left Fukase and the couple divorced, prompting the heartbroken photographer to return home to Hokkaido. Continuing to take family portraits, Fukase replaced his wife with young female actors and dancers from Tokyo, who strike deliberately droll, theatrical and sometimes ridiculous poses, often pulling faces for the camera.
In one image a completely naked woman, whose hair has been tied back to expose her breasts, although her hands cover her genitalia, looks entirely comfortable as she stands smiling alongside nine members of the Fukase family. The ironic nature of this photograph has been enhanced by the inclusion of the family cat, who looks keen to escape the hold of one female relative.
Fukase’s approach, including the comic insertion of performers, might at first glance appear to poke fun at both his family and their photographic business. However, he always positions the guest stars to the far left of his relatives, as if not wanting to fully disrupt their ranks. Moreover, the extended Fukase family are seemingly in on his joke too; in several images they play along with this sardonic reimagining of the family portrait. In one dramatic photograph the whole group turns their back on the camera, with the exception of Fukase’s father. Seated, once again, at the heart of the group and looking straight ahead, Sukezo has been singled out. In another photograph, Fukase and his father are pictured alone in the studio; standing shoulder to shoulder, with their hands by their sides, the two men pose properly for the camera while wearing only white underwear.
Although parodying the formal family photograph, Fukase’s images do stress the significance of his father, who partakes in his son’s play on portraiture. The importance of Fukase’s father to him is also evident in another series of over one hundred black-and-white photographs, titled Memories of Father (1971–90), which the artist worked on in parallel with Family. Likewise published in the format of an album, this complementary body of work reveals Fukase once again deconstructing the tradition of family portraiture. However, on this occasion, the artist took Sukezo as his sole subject.
A poignant photobook, Memories of Father acts as a visual autobiography of Sukezo’s life, which incorporates archival images alongside Fukase’s own photographs of his father. It begins with pictures of Sukezo as a baby, being held by his parents, before showing him as a small boy in rural Hokkaido: he stands proudly in a smart blazer and hat, ready for school; he rides a bike; he sits up straight within rows of fellow students for a class photograph. The album then charts Sukezo’s life as he starts his own family and, becoming a father, takes his children on trips, including to a bowling alley. Several photographs capture Sukezo at his most carefree: in one he holds up a long slim fishing rod, smiling gleefully for the camera, as he reveals his catch.
Seen side by side, Memories of Father and Family tell two sides to the same story. Within the staged studio portraits, Sukezo is framed as head of the Fukase family, appearing as a governing presence within the business which he successfully ran for many years. In Memories of Father, Fukase chronicles Sukezo’s personal narrative, revealing his identity and personality, which exists beyond the parameters of the studio; Fukase points out that there is much more to his father than the leading roles – across work and family life – which many men must assume, particularly in patriarchal societies such as that of Japan.
In both photobooks, Fukase also focuses on the vulnerability of his father as he ages. Memories of Father includes photographs of Sukezo as he moves from middle into old age. Several images show Sukezo, who is sick in hospital, lying covered in bed sheets. Similarly, the Family photographs highlight Sukezo’s transformation as he ages. One of the later images in this album features Fukase and his father, alone in the studio, posing for the camera wearing dark trousers but topless. Sukezo, who is seated on a chair, looks frail; his bare chest is emaciated to the point that his ribs are visible. Fukase stands behind him, placing his hands protectively on the skinny shoulders; it’s a moving image of a child caring for his elderly father.
Fukase doesn’t stop there: we also see Sukezo in death. After suffering from pneumonia in his later life, he passed away in 1987. In Memories of Father, a photograph shows his coffined body about to be cremated, while another records his funeral at which his family wear smart black mourning clothes. Nine members of the family, including Fukase, have also posed in the same outfits for a formal group portrait in Family; in the place usually occupied by Sukezo is a framed life-sized portrait of him smiling – it’s one which Fukase had taken of him in the studio in 1974.
Far from mocking his father, it becomes clear that Fukase selected Sukezo as his muse to pay tribute to him and his life, which was defined in large part by photography. By placing the photograph of his late father within the funeral photograph, Fukase reveals the performative ritual of smiling for a photographer behind the lens, which Sukezo observes even in death; his legacy now lives on in his sons.
Throughout Family, Fukase is also illuminating the clever ways in which photographers, including Sukezo, control and distort narratives with their camera. The insertion of incongruous naked female models – a recurrent motif throughout art history – highlights the carefully constructed element to group portraits within a photographer’s studio. There is a fictional element to the family portrait, Fukase shows the viewer. Not only does he elevate the family album into a fine art object, but he also points to the artistry involved in taking a group portrait. Although Sukezo observed the tradition of ‘truth photography’, a great level of creative staging was involved in this.
It also becomes obvious that Fukase’s style of ‘art photography’ is not as far separated from his father’s practice as might first appear. In his nostalgically tinted Memories of Father, Fukase focuses on his father’s life outside the studio, illuminating the real and complex man behind the camera; he is recording truth. Although, on the surface, they had pursued opposing types of photography – ‘shashin’ and ‘geijutsu shashin’ – father and son were both involved in capturing the theatre of life through the portraits of families, including their own.
After Sukezo passed away, the family business struggled; with the advent of affordable cameras, people no longer required professional portrait photographers. Fukase’s series can therefore also be understood as a homage to the tangible family album, filled with memories, which had defined the lives of three generations of the Fukase family. The first and last image featured in the Family photobook are of the Fukase Photographic Studio, immortalising the place which the artist had once left behind, to which he then returned, and with which he was indelibly connected.
In Family and Memories of Father, Fukase’s ageing father also acts as a memento mori, reminding us that death is inevitable for us all. Marked by a deep sense of loss, these intense series offer an unflinching commentary on the transience of life. As Fukase understood and wrote, ‘Every member of the family whose inverted image I capture on the film inside my camera will die. The camera catches them, and in that instant it is a recording instrument of death.’ He went on to conclude, ‘For me, everything is a commemorative photograph, to be eventually stuck in a battered old photo-album.’
In 1992, just one year after he published Family and Memories of Father, Fukase suffered a traumatic brain injury when he fell down the steep steps of a bar in Tokyo. He entered a coma from which he never woke up and died in 2012. Like his father, Fukase is preserved within the pages of his family albums, within which he frequently appears side by side with Sukezo. Inheriting a compulsion to commemorate people, Fukase had taken as his final muse the man who had created, taught and inspired him – his father.