User:Tonywz/Provoke (magazine)

Provoke (Purovōku, プロヴォーク), with its subtitle of Provocative Materials for Thought (Shisō no tame no chōhatsuteki shiryō 思想のための挑発的資料), was an experimental small press Japanese photography magazine founded in 1968 by critic/photographers Kōji Taki and Takuma Nakahira, photographer Yutaka Takanashi, and writer. Daidō Moriyama joined with the second issue. Provoke was "a platform for a new photographic expression", "to free photography from subservience to the language of words", "that stood in opposition to the photography establishment". It was a quarterly magazine that also included poetry, criticism and photographic theory. Provoke has been described as having "lasted for only three issues" but with "profound effect upon Japanese photography in the 1970s and 80s," and is said to have "spread a completely new idea of photography in Japan." Although the magainze itself only lasted two years, from 1968-69, the photographers collaborated with one another for around a decade (1966-74), creating a strong network across the fine and performing arts, architecture, literature and critical theory. Thr group disbanded because of internal differences on how theory, practice and politics ought to be reconciled.

Origins
The three issues of Provoke magazine were published on 1 November 1968, and 10 March and 10 August 1969, each in an edition of 1,000 copies.

The Provoke manifesto declared that visual images cannot completely represent an idea as words can, yet photographs can provoke language and ideas, "resulting in a new language and in new meanings"; the photographer can capture what cannot be expressed in words, presenting photographs as "documents" for others to read, hence Provoke's "provocative materials for thought" subtitle. This is based on their conception of the world as defined by language, and images as irreversible materiality (hikagyakuteki bussitsusei) "constitutes the reverse of that world.

Specifically, Provoke artists sought to clarify the distinctions between document (kiroku) and documentation, in order to reassert the truthfulness and precision of documentation as the "direct work of recording the facts that lay before their cameras". In that regard, their collective ambitions could be compared to that of the avant-garde postwar Japanese art collective, Hi-Red Center (founded and disbanded earlier that decade, 1963-4), who sought to decentre art from the austere conditions of a visual art industry to engage in direct action in the urban landscape of Tokyo. Kim Gyewon notes that Provoke rebelled against the visual grammar of journalism and emotive reportage that was circulated through various channels of the mass media, instead choosing to focus on the "accidental, continent, and anonymous".

Aesthetic Form
The visual style of the photographs in Provoke has been said to be, in Japanese, 'are-bure-boke', translated as 'grainy/rough, blurry, out-of-focus', a style already found in mainstream magazines such as Asahi Camera and Camera Mainichi. Nakahira and Moriyama had been experimenting with 'are-bure-boke' prior to their involvement in Provoke, and Moriyama's 12-part conceptual project "Akushidento (Accident)" for Asahi Camera in 1969 took the approach in new directions. There were other comparable radical magazines and groups at the time including Geribara 5, which published three books. Asahi Journal, Kikan shashin eizō (The Photo Image) and Design also served as platforms for avant garde photography in the 'are-bure-boke' style by Nakahira, Moriyama and others.

However, because the four editors-photographers of Provoke could not agree on how their aesthetic forms should be contextualised, Taki eventually included a disclaimer that all four photographers had independent styles and methods (hōhō) that were mutually discreet. Taki in particular hoped to explore the theoretical aspects of photography, fashioning a "scientific" photography that was based on the concepts of kankyō (environment) and Barthesian notion of "codeless" photography (conveying meaning sublinguistically". The former was aligned to developing interests in the environmental, aspects of experience superseding the hegemonic control capitalist politicians had over the public, and could be associated with the landmark exhibition, From Space to Environment (1966).

Kim Gyewon asserts that Provoke should be historicised as a turning point in the history of postwar photography, distinct from Natori Yonosuke, who emphasised visual effects in design and layout, and Domon Ken, who abstained from any directional interference i the composition of his photographs. Documentary photographic practice, to Provoke, had to be personal and affective, and yet not dismissive of the independent verisimilitude of the camera in capturing reality.

A crucial aspect of their practice was the consideration of paper as a critically physical medium, and photographic prints as not just reproductions of images but completely entwined. This thus explains the implicit purpose of their production of the magazines, especially with their intentional remediation of other paper-based forms, such as photographic prints, coterie magazines, general photography magazines, and artist books.

Issues

 * Provoke 1: Shisō no tame no chōhatsuteki shiryō = Provoke 1: Provocative Resources for Thought. Tokyo: Purovōku-sha, 1968. With photographs by Nakahira, Takanashi and Taki and text by Takahiko and Taki. Edition of 1,000 copies.
 * Provoke 2: Shisō no tame no chōhatsuteki shiryō = Provoke 2: Provocative Resources for Thought. Tokyo: Purovōku-sha, 1969. The theme was Eros. With photographs by Moriyama, Nakahira, Takanashi and Taki and text by Okada. Edition of 1,000 copies.
 * Provoke 3: Shisō no tame no chōhatsuteki shiryō = Provoke 3: Provocative Resources for Thought. Tokyo: Purovōku-sha, 1969. With photographs by Moriyama, Nakahira, Takanashi, and Taki and text by Okada and Gōzō Yoshimasu. Edition of 1,000 copies.

Historicisation
On 31 March 1970 the collective published the book ''4. Mazu tashikarashisa no sekai o suterō: Shashin to gengo no shisō''(First Abandon the World of Pseudo-Certainty: Thoughts on Photography and Language), through Tabata Shoten. A review of the group's activity, it is regarded as the Provoke No. 4 that is mentioned in No. 3. It contains photographs by Moriyama, Nakahira, Takanashi and Taki and text by, Nakahira, Okada and Taki.

Critic Gerry Badger has written that the "legendary Japanese magazine, Provoke, lasted for only three issues, but had a profound effect upon Japanese photography in the 1970s and 80s".

The first substantial academic investigation into Provoke is Chapter 3 of Fabienne Adler's 2009 Ph.D. thesis "First, Abandon the World of Seeming Certainty: Theory and Practice of the 'Camera-Generated Image' in Nineteen-Sixties Japan" (Stanford University). In 2010 a journal article on Daidō Moriyama contextualized that photographer's photographic experimentation of the late 1960s and early 1970s in relation to his contributions to Provoke. Yuko Fujii's 2012 Ph.D. thesis on Provoke was entitled "Photography As Process: A Study of the Japanese Photography Journal Provoke" (City University of New York). Matthew Witkovsky's chapter "Provoke: Photography Up For Discussion" in the 2016 exhibition catalogue Provoke: Between Protest and Performance contains new research. An article from 2016 by Gyewon Kim proposes that Provoke used paper as a metaphor for the city, thereby critiquing the Japanese state's imposition of homogeneous urban planning and design. A lengthy 2017 article in the journal History of Photography by Philip Charrier argues that Provoke was highly theoretical in orientation. It shows that under the leadership of Taki and Nakahira, and inspired by the early writings on photography by Roland Barthes, the collective set out to create photographic imagery that could escape language and code.

Exhibitions
Work from Provoke was shown in the 2016/2017 touring exhibition Provoke: Between Protest and Performance – Photography in Japan 1960/1975 at Albertina in Vienna, Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, Le Bal in Paris and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Publications reproducing Provoke material
The Japanese Box: Facsimile Reprint of Six Rare Photographic Publications of the Provoke Era, published in 2001 by Edition 7L (Paris) and Steidl (Göttingen), contains facsimiles of the three issues of Provoke (as well as Nakahira's For a Language to Come, Moriyama's Farewell Photography and Nobuyoshi Araki's Sentimental Journey) and a newly edited booklet of explanatory material in English. The Box (an actual wooden box) was made in an edition of 1500. Does not include texts by Takahiko Okada.

A catalog for the similarly named exhibition, Provoke: Between Protest and Performance, was published in 2016 by Steidl. It contains photographs from Provoke and from other photographers including Shomei Tomatsu and Araki, as well as texts from that period and newly written.

Provoke: Complete Reprint of 3 Volumes was published in 2018 by Nitesha. It is a reprint of the three volumes of Provoke, including all images and all original texts (including those by Takahiko Okada) in Japanese. It also includes a supplemental volume with English and Chinese translations of the original Japanese texts.

All three issues of Provoke appeared in The Open Book, a traveling exhibition that tracked "the history of the photographic medium in the twentieth century through printed images in book form".

Publications about Provoke

 * Provoke. Tokyo: Seikyusha, 1996. Mostly text, in Japanese, with some photographs.