Sakae Tamura (photographer)

This article is about a photographer of portraits and other general subjects. For the nature photographer, see Sakae Tamura (nature photographer).
Tamura's photograph Shiroi hana ("White flower") appearing on the cover of the large catalogue of the exhibition "The Founding and Development of Modern Photography in Japan", held by the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in 1995.

Sakae Tamura (田村 榮, Tamura Sakae, September 17, 1906 – July 22, 1987) was a Japanese photographer, prominent in the years before the war.

Born in Ōtsu, Shiga Prefecture,[1] Tamura graduated from the Tokyo College of Photography (東京写真専門学校, Tōkyō Shashin Senmon Gakkō; now Tokyo Polytechnic University) and entered Oriental (オリエンタル写真工, Orientaru Shashin Kōgyō) in 1928 and became editor of Photo Times [Wikidata]. He was an active contributor to the magazine Geijutsu Shashin Kenkyū [Wikidata] and in Japan Photography Association (日本光画協会, Nihon Kōga Kyōkai), created in 1928 and a successor to the Japan Photographic Art Association (日本光画芸術協会, Nihon Kōga Geijutsu Kyōkai). He was a leading figure in the New Photography Research Society [Wikidata] (新興写真研究会, Shinkō Shashin Kenkyūkai), formed in 1930.

Tamura's work was influenced both by pictorialism and by New Photography [Wikidata].

Tamura is particularly known for his portraits, and Shiroi hana (白い花, White flower, 1931) is the best-known of these and widely anthologized.[2] Okatsuka says that it expresses a certain lyricism but “displays a more sophisticated sense of maturity” than the works of his contemporaries Masataka Takayama and Jun Watanabe.[3]

  1. ^ Matsumoto claims — in “Sakka kaisetsu” (作家解説, About the photographers) — that he was born in Tokyo; this article instead follows the Biographic Dictionary and Founding as later and perhaps better informed works.
  2. ^ Handsome reproductions of two different versions appear as plate 52 of Matsumoto, ed., Collection (reddish), and plates 32 and 93 of Founding and Tucker, ed., History respectively (much more neutral).
  3. ^ Akiko Okatsuka, in Founding, 20.