ZEN FOTO GALLERY

"This booklet marks a joint exhibition held in September 2010 between Morioka Shoten, Niepce Gallery and Zen Foto. Sharing a joint interest in photography and old photographs in particular we decided a year ago to hold a joint exhibition.

Morioka is displaying the collection of Koga Magazines owned by Kotaro Iizawa. Koga was a seminal publication in the history of Japanese photography, featuing the work of several of the leading photographers of the day. In addition to the photographs Koga included contemporary writing about art and photography. We have reproduced Koga 3 in its entirety in a separate publication.

In this booklet we reproduce the fist article in the first edition of Koga. Written by Nobuo Ina the article is entitled "Shashi ni Kaere!", literally "Return to Photography!". I was not able to locate an English translation so I have had to attempt one myself. I am not a specialist translator , the language is old Japanese and the content is expressed in complex language. It turned out to be the hardest translation I have ever attempted. My thanks go to many people who helped, not least my son Eddie, who gamely battled with the text during our summer holiday. The reason that I perservered in this difficult task is that I found the article fascinating in its analysis of photography with many insights that remain relevant. I hope this will be use ful for many others."

-Excerpt Shashin Ni Kaere by Mark Pearson Director of Zen Foto Gallery

Included in this publication is the translated text of Nobuo Ina's "Shashin ni Kaere!", an essay by photography critic Kotaro Iizawa, and an introduction by Zen Foto Gallery Director, Mark Pearson.

Text available in Japanese and English.