Provoke: Provocative Materials for Thought 3 (August 10, 1969)

The photobook attained new heights of artistic achievement in Japan during the 1960s and 1970s, when the country was at the forefront of an important cultural renaissance. One of the most vital influential publications of this time was the photo-magazine Provoke. This publication documented the transformation of postwar Japan and the social upheavals of the 1960s, and challenged conventional ideas about what photographs could be. Founded in 1968 by two writers with a serious interest in photography, TAKI Kōji and OKADA Takahiko, the publication featured in particular the work of the influential photographers MORIYAMA Daidō, NAKAHIRA Takuma and TAKANASHI Yutaka. While the publication lasted only a year and a half, and was produced only in a limited number of issues, it showcased a new expressive photographic style – one that was grainy, blurry, and out-of-focus (translated in Japan as are, bure, boke) - that was iconoclastic, subjective, intuitive, and closely linked to similar ideas that were current in the country’s avant-garde literature and cinema.