Galerie Sho Contemporary Art
Closes in 31 days
The main danger a commercial photographer faces is the aura of banality that photographing consumer goods inevitably presents. To counter this and keep their corporate portfolios hot, photographers often pursue a parallel artistic career with a bit of edge.
As a hired lens for Suntory's oolong teas and Shiseido's toiletries, Yoshihiko Ueda has managed to do this with several exhibitions and books that focus on those photographic perennials -- botany and nudity. While his pictures of forests and foliage are esteemed for their soft, delicate light, his nudes are interesting at a more conceptual level for the way they expose the unholy alliance of art and porn that has always been present in nude photography. The Galerie Sho's exhibition (www.g-sho.com) presents seven life-sized, full-frontal nudes alongside several smaller sets of images.
While earlier nudes were encouraged to affect derivative poses as if to say "We're not porn, we're art," Ueda's recent work has stripped nude photography of all artifice, purifying the act to its essentials -- a middle-aged male photographer snapping naked young women. The women assume neutral poses against a neutral background, and the lack of artistic intent is as obvious as the lack of pornographic intent, thus creating strangely unnerving images.