Jeremy Stigter "Visiting Mister Ueda"

Dates: December 2 (Fri) — December 24 (Sat), 2022

Zen Foto Gallery is pleased to present Visiting Mister Ueda, Jeremy Stigter’s first solo exhibition with the gallery from December 2nd to 24th. The exhibition will feature a selection of 20 photographs from his first photobook under the same title published by Zen Foto Gallery in July 2021.

“Sometime in the autumn of 1993 I was fortunate to be able to pay a visit to Shoji Ueda, the famous Japanese photographer. Taking the train down from Tokyo I arrived early in the evening in the small town of Yonago, where Mister Ueda lived. Yonago lies in the province of Tottori, an isolated peninsula on the west coast of Japan and is home to the magnificent dunes, the famous Tottori sakyū, that served as the backdrop to so many of Ueda’s
best-known photographs.

The following day I met Mister Ueda at the small photography centre he had set up and run for quite a number of years. I had brought along an introductory letter, in Japanese, with a few questions, and a request to take his picture in the dunes he had made so unforgettable. Happily, Ueda-sensei gracefully consented, and, after a cup of tea and a chat, having already taken the trouble to answer in writing the questions— looking at them now, they appear particularly innocuous — we left by car for the dunes, a friend kindly serving as our driver. And so off we went, into a blustery autumn day.”

― Jeremy Stigter

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Artist Profile

Jeremy Stigter

Born in 1958 in The Hague, The Netherlands, Jeremy Stigter lives and works in France. He took up photography in 1986 following his decisive encounter with Ed van der Elsken in Tokyo and began presenting his works frequently in the 1990s. In 1993, his first solo exhibition in Japan was held at Zeit Foto Salon, which was located at Nihombashi, Tokyo at that time. That was also when the founder of the gallery Etsuro Ishihara introduced Stigter to Shoji Ueda, which led to the creation of the series Visiting Mister Ueda. In 2005, his solo exhibition Hito Bito was held at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rome, and his photobook The Jewish Bride was published by Nazraeli Press in 2009. Stigter practices photography freely under many forms and has developed a photographic universe where the societal documentary meets narration and psychology.

Publications & Prints