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This catalog accompanies the Takuma Nakahira exhibition “Burn—Overflow” held at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, from February 6 – April 7, 2024.

The exhibition was the first major retrospective of Takuma Nakahira’s work in close to twenty years. Like the exhibition, the catalog traces his career, his ideas, his inspirations, his collaborations, and his lasting legacy in many images and numerous essays, organized into five chapters (plus exhibition views, texts, and additional data). “Burn—Overflow” includes many previously unpublished photographs and pays particular attention to the importance of magazines and Nakahira’s awareness of the ways photographs were distributed. It also focuses on the period between 1975 and 1977, when Nakahira suffered an accident that left him with amnesia, and how it influenced his work.
In addition to an in-depth introductory essay by curator Rei Masuda, “Burn—Overflow” also includes texts by Matthew S. Witkovsky, Akihito Yasumi, and Shino Kuraishi.

“What Nakahira sought through these works and writings was resistance to systems pervasively embedded in contemporary society. These systems enforce norms and order and are often subconsciously internalized, leading to a kind of voluntary submission. He sought resistance to the ubiquitous influence of power and capital, which permeates everyday life and alienates the individual. Provoke was initiated in order to foster thought, and develop a fundamental language, capable of countering these forces. Nakahira’s spearheading of ‘landscape theory’ stemmed from recognizing these systems as manifested in the landscape that surrounds us.”
― from Rei Masuda’s introduction, “Tracing the Arc of Nakahira Takuma’s Career”