shashasha

Kazuo Kitai’s journey into the world of German Expressionism, a short-lived architectural phase that began in the 1920s and ended when the Nazis came to power, has now been published in the form of photobook forty years later.

In 80 photographs – many previously unpublished – Kitai’s “Journey Into German Expressionism” documents not only buildings designed by Expressionist architects, but also the life that unfolds around them from the photographer’s personal viewpoint. The series itself constitutes a major departure from Kitai’s previous photography and represents the artist’s shift towards a more artistic approach to photography.

“The artistic movement of German Expressionism thrived in Germany throughout the 1920s, until the nazis suppressed it as so-called entartete Kunst (‘degenerate art’) in the 1930s. The early 20th century was a time when unique art movements developed in many countries around the world, from art nouveau in France to Taisho Romanticism in Japan.
German Expressionist architecture rejected the ornamentation and display of power of previous architectural styles but also had no interest in the rational functional beauty of the Bauhaus school. It is an architecture full of seeming contradictions, interesting in particular for its imitation of other forms and shapes.”
― from Kazuo Kitai’s afterword (included in Japanese & English)