UCLA

Many art historical discussions take a philosophical approach to photography, in which the medium becomes an ontological object. This dissertation proceeds instead from the subject of the photographer, understood in phenomenological terms. In particular, I take the photographs and critical essays of the Japanese photographer Nakahira Takuma (1938-2015) as a case study to ask how photographers are bodies in the world. Nakahira stands out for his significant contributions to the politicization of photographic theory and practice, largely during the 1970s. Yet he differs from other artist-critic figures working around the world at this time because he consistently staked his work on corporeal experience. Drawing on the events of 1968, mass media distribution of images, conceptual practices of photography, Mono-ha art theory and the political situation of Okinawa, Nakahira continuously worked over the question of how bodies relate to the world.

Each chapter of this dissertation examines one group of Nakahira’s photographs, or one of his essays, to trace the development of his corporeal theory and practice. Chapter 1 introduces photographs that Nakahira published in the second issue of the magazine "Provoke," to show why he came to understand bodies in political terms around 1968. Chapter 2 considers the body of the photographer in relation to mass media, capital and state power, through a close reading of “The Illusion Called Document,” a 1972 essay that Nakahira wrote in dialogue with contemporary media theory. Chapter 3 positions Nakahira’s 1971 Paris installation "Circulation" within the context of conceptual art and photography. In contrast to such cool indexicality, this work developed the idea of the photographer as a body flowing through the world. Chapter 4 turns to Nakahira’s most well-known piece of writing, “Why an Illustrated Botanical Reference Book?” Drawing on phenomenology through the Mono-ha artist Lee Ufan, Nakahira situates the photographer in relation to the world through the embodied notion of “encounter.” Chapter 5 examines photographs that Nakahira took on the islands of Amami. The disorientations of photographic space in this series represent a critique at a sensorial level of the colonial relationship between “mainland” Japan and Okinawa.