Ken Domon
| Ken Domon | |
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Domon in 1948
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| Born |
土門 拳 25 October 1909 Sakata, Yamagata Prefecture, Japan |
| Died | 15 September 1990 (aged 80) Tokyo, Japan |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Education | Kotaro Miyauchi Photo Studio |
| Known for | Photography |
| Awards | Mainichi Photography Award (1958) Japan Photo Critics Association Photographer of the Year Award (1958) Award of Arts (1959) Japan Journalist's Congress Award (1960) |
Ken Domon (土門 拳 Domon Ken?, 25 October 1909 – 15 September 1990) is one of the most renowned Japanese photographers of the 20th century. He is most celebrated as a photojournalist, though he may have been most prolific as a photographer of Buddhist temples and statuary.
Domon was born in Sakata, Yamagata Prefecture, and, as a young man, was deeply influenced by the philosophical writings of Tetsuro Watsuji. He studied law at Nihon University, but was expelled from the school due to his participation in radical politics. He moved from painting to portrait photography, and obtained a position with Kotaro Miyauchi Photo Studio in 1933. In 1935 he joined Nippon Kōbō to work on its magazine Nippon. Four years later he moved to Kokusai Bunka Shinkōkai, a national propaganda organization; like Ihei Kimura and many other notable Japanese photographers, he helped the war effort.
With the end of the war, Domon became independent and documented the aftermath of the war, focusing on society and the lives of ordinary people. He became known as a proponent of realism in photography, which he described as, "an absolute snapshot that is absolutely not dramatic." He was a prolific contributor to photographic magazines, revived or started afresh through the early 1950s. With Kimura, Hiroshi Hamaya and others, he rejected posed and other artful photographs; in his polemics in the photographic magazines, Domon was the most forceful exponent of this view. He famously defined his goal as "the direct connection between camera and motif."
Among Domon's most powerful images are those taken in the first decade or so after the war, particularly those of the survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the life and particularly the children in a poor coal-mining community in Chikuhō, Kyūshū), and the improvised play of children in Kōtō, Tokyo.
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