Launched in 2013, Kyotographie has become Japan’s leading international photography exhibition. The month-long event is held annually in various venues throughout the ancient capital of Kyoto, many of which are normally closed to visitors, and invites viewers to engage with key modern and contemporary photographic works, while exploring the festival’s locale. This year’s edition included contributions from 15 artists, displayed in 15 different settings, including historic merchant houses, temples, as well as established museums and galleries. For the first time, industrial spaces in the Tambaguchi area, located in the city’s near-west side, were also activated as part of the extensive network of showcases.

Bringing together the eclectic mix of practitioners working in different genres of photography was the theme “Up,” which encouraged viewers to think optimistically about what they can do to improve a troubled world. The photographers divided broadly into two groups: those of historic interest and those active today. The mixture of old and new—like Kyoto itself—gave the exhibition depth, and raised questions about the place of photography in contemporary art.

In particular, Kyotographie paid homage to photographers working in the mid- and late-20th century, arguing that they remain important today because they helped expand the possibilities of the medium as an artform. The exhibition of Italian-born, French lensman Frank Horvat’s street photography-inspired, action-packed fashion photographs, spanning the 1950s to the '80s, displayed in a merchant-house-turned-gallery, was a reminder of how an artist can draw on one genre to revolutionize another. Similarly, a showcase of Jean-Paul Goude’s portraits of trendsetters, such as Grace Jones, from the 1960s to the '90s, shown together with his costume designs in the Museum of Kyoto Annex (formerly a bank), demonstrated how photography can be used to celebrate the body. The first posthumous retrospective of Masahisa Fukase (1934–2012) evinced the diversity of his work through the inclusion of images from his legendary 1986 photobook Ravens, which tracks the eponymous birds, and rare large-format Polaroids. Over in Ryosokuin, a sub-temple of Kenninji, the oldest Zen temple in Japan, were Yukio Nakagawa’s (1918–2012) photographs of flowers and vegetables, arranged and framed in surreal compositions. Placed inside the temple on tatami mats, painted black for the exhibition, Nakagawa’s embrace of color was juxtaposed with austere Zen aesthetics. 

The exhibition also included two photographers known for documenting social movements in the ’60s. French artist Claude Dityvon’s (1937–2008) monochrome photographs depict the popular uprisings in Paris in May of 1968. Fifty years on, the photographs are a reminder that established paradigms can collapse quickly when the desire for change reaches a critical mass. Active at around the same time, American photojournalist Stephen Shames was given free access to the Black Panthers’ activities from the mid-'60s to the early '70s, and produced intimate portraits of the social movement, such as Black Panthers on Parade (1968), which shows group members’ varying facial expressions in an otherwise uniform line. 

On the other hand, some of the contemporary photographers in the show deal directly with today’s social issues. Tadashi Ono and Tomomi Morita question the environmental costs of Japan’s rise as an economic superpower. Based in France, Ono photographed the sea wall in Fukushima, which reaches over 12 meters in height, as it was being built following the devastating earthquake in 2011. In 2017, Morita won the KG+ Award, given to artists in the satellite exhibition held in conjunction with Kyotographie. As part of this year's main exhibition, he captured the areas around Tokyo’s Narita Airport, which have remained fenced off 50 years after student demonstrations against the building of the facility. Continuing the theme of environmentalism, Gideon Mendel’s photographs, displayed in an abandoned icehouse, show people around the world standing helplessly in floodwaters. 

Several photographers pose questions about globalization. Lauren Greenfield’s works depict lonely figures in the grips of the conspicuous consumption of expensive goods in an abandoned newspaper-printing factory. Romuald Hazoumè, from Benin, examined the phenomenon through black-and-white prints featuring people transporting gasoline, and color photographs of Yoruba-masked ancestral worship ceremonies—a tradition that is gradually disappearing.

Additionally, there was a mix of approaches to portraiture. Alberto García-Alix was represented with a collection of monochrome images of punks and neighborhood ruffians from Spain. K-NARF, a Tokyo-based French photographer, displayed 80 life-size portraits of people who work at the nearby Kyoto City Central Wholesale Market along the exterior walls of several market buildings. 

Finally, Izumi Miyazaki, a 24-year old Japanese photographer who first became known for her selfies on social media, presented a series of colorful yet surreal selfies titled UP to ME (2015–18). The title borrows from this year’s theme and suggests that, like Miyazaki herself, Kyotographie will continue to attract attention and, more importantly, stir questions for years to come. 

The 2018 Kyotographie International Photography Festival is on view at various locations in Kyoto until May 13, 2018. 

• Japan