FUJIFILM SQUARE
Photo History Museum Photo Exhibition

Shoji Otake “COLOR DREAMS: The Age of Color Photography”

To this day, I haven’t forgotten the excitement I felt the moment I saw a developed color film for the first time.

Shoji Otake

Shoji Otake has left a major mark on the history of post-war Japanese photography. He started his career as a contract photographer for the public relations department of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP or, in Japan, GHQ) after World War II, when Tokyo was nothing but burnt out ruins. Otake was lucky. Despite goods of every description being in short supply at that time, Otake had free access to cameras and film, even color film. He was fascinated by the vivid colors and sensed color photography’s great potential, which he became one of the first to explore. It is not too much to say that for Otake color photography was a medium that symbolized the beginning of a new era, a medium that he placed his hopes and dreams in.

During the 1960s, Otake went on to build a brilliant career as a photographer by providing photographs for various illustrated magazines and advertisements, reflecting Japan on its way to a period of high economic growth. Especially his portraits of women made him famous, so much so that his name became synonymous with female portraits. The remarkable technological progress made by camera and film manufacturers in Japan was another essential factor behind the achievements of Otake and many other photographers at that time.

Fujifilm was one of the first companies to develop color films in Japan and collaborated from the earliest stages of product development with Otake, who at that time already was familiar with American color films and worked at the vanguard of color photography. Fujifilm also hosted exhibitions of Otake’s color works such as “Recent Color Photographs by Shoji Otake” in 1960 and “COLOR LADIES: A FUJICOLOR Exhibition of Photographs by Shoji Otake” in 1967 at what today is the FUJIFILM Photo Salon. It is safe to say that Otake’s uncompromising eye has contributed considerably to the development of color films in Japan.

This exhibition will show 30 color works that have been carefully reproduced using state-of-the-art technology. It will include color photographs Otake took for magazine covers and gravure magazines in the 1960s, and works that have been exhibited at FUJIFILM Photo Salon in the past and have been rediscovered in the process of archiving his oeuvre following his death six years ago. This exhibition will present a close look at Otake’s achievements within the context of the history of Japanese color photography. It allows us a glimpse at how vivid and fashionable color photographs, during a time dominated by monochrome photography, expressed hopes and dreams of a prosperous future to come.

Born in Shizuoka Prefecture in 1922, Otake Shoji devoted himself to photography since his days as a teenager. Though starting out as an amateur, he soon made himself known to the broader photographic community of Japan by repeatedly winning monthly competitions hosted by camera magazines. Otake studied at The Tongwen Guan, the School of Combined Learning in Shanghai, until he was drafted in 1942. He returned to Tokyo in 1945 and became a contract photographer for the public relations department of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP or, in Japan, GHQ) in 1946. In 1950, he was made the head of the Photography Department of the U.S.-based news agency International News Service’s (INS) Tokyo branch office and started working as a freelance photographer later that year.

In 1953, he became one of the founding members of the Nikakai Association of Photographers. He photographed many of Japan’s leading authors, actors and artists and was especially lauded for his portraits and nude photographs of women. In 1992, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the Photographic Society of Japan. Shoji Otake died in 2015 at the age of 93.