The great photography critic Koji Taki once argued that the Japanese landscape is "a landscape of resignation." The setting sun is the ultimate symbol of that resignation. It is the acceptance that the beauty of this moment is precisely because it will never come again.
, explores the unique Japanese tradition where photographers are as dedicated to the written word as they are to the image. In Japan, photography magazines served as a primary platform for ongoing discourse, ranging from personal diaries to critical debates. Mutual Images Journal The anthology is organized into seven thematic sections: setting sun writings by japanese photographers
In the following exploration, we examine the writings and visual philosophies of Japanese photographers who have used the setting sun to define their art. The Philosophy of Mono no Aware The great photography critic Koji Taki once argued
Photographers like (1930–2012) rarely shot a clear, beautiful sunset. Instead, his "writings" were about the dust of dusk. In his series Nagasaki (1961), the sun is never fully visible. It appears as a bleached-out glare behind a cracked wall or a reflection in a puddle contaminated with industrial runoff. Tomatsu wrote metaphorically with his camera: the setting sun was a patient dying in the arms of the modern world. In Japan, photography magazines served as a primary
Where Moriyama is chaos, Hiroshi Sugimoto is stillness. In his legendary series Seascapes , Sugimoto reduces the world to two elements: water and sky. There are no landmarks, no boats, no birds. Just the horizon.