For "Cy Twombly Photographs: Lyrical Variations" Chiba Prefecture's Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art brings together exactly 100 photographs, chronologically arranged to span the length of the artist's career. A selection of prints, paintings and sculptures are also being shown, to be reconsidered in light of the photographs.

Twombly moved to Rome in 1957 and continued to live between Italy and New York until his death in 2011. His artwork is very much a product of this lifestyle decision. "I liked the life. That came first," he once commented when talking about Italy, and although his work refers to Mediterranean history, mythology and literature, it is also concerned with daily life there. His pieces are a mix of history and autobiography, and his photography, in particular, highlights a curiosity and sense of humor in relation to everyday objects and rituals, which in Italy often unavoidably allude to the past.

The exhibition begins back in America, with a series of still-life pinhole camera photographs produced by Twombly while studying at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, in 1951. These black-and-white pictures resemble the paintings of Giorgio Morandi in their modest subject and monochromatic light, and they display the sparseness and sensitivity toward objects that is found throughout the exhibition.