Keizo Kitajima’s photographs of New York during the 80s capture a rawness that we might not ever see again
by Ayla Angelos
The Japanese photographer has reached great acclaim for his urban shots of people across the globe. But his New York photos in particular – the gritty and allusive – have profound and lasting impact.
Keizo Kitajima is known globally for his urban street shots, capturing people – temporary strangers – as they roamed the streets of Tokyo, New York and Eastern Europe. The Japanese photographer set many benchmarks in the 70s and 80s with his unusually rough and confrontational style, to such lengths that he ended up publishing numerous series of this ilk, including his famed work documenting the Afro-American community in 80’s New York. But to simply refer to Keizo as a street photographer would be to dilute his practice, for his work depicts more than just an immediate snap of humanity; it encloses a part of history.
Having first picked up a camera in the mid-70s, Keizo made way into his medium during the “season of politics,” he explains. A pivotal moment in time, it was while the Parisian May Revolution in 1968 neared an end – a student revolt that began in demonstration against the Vietnam War. The camera was the adept outlet for voicing such events and frustrations of this era, as Keizo explains: “Photography was one of the most cutting-edge and powerful genres of expression in Japan and I was very interested in it.”
Simultaneously, Keizo counts himself fortunate to have joined the Daido Moriyama class at the Workshop Photography School – a profound avant-garde photography school that launched in 1975, and is also the publisher of a photography periodical with the same name. This was followed by the arrival of Provoke, the “most radical and critical group”, and printed Japanese photo magazines led by some of the county's best known photographers and art critics, like Moriyama, Takuma Nakahira, Koji Taki. “At the same time, Japan was undergoing rapid urbanisation, Keizo adds. “I was obsessed with the magical power of the city. To me, the big city looked like chaos, holding both light and darkness. While wandering through the maze-like alleys of Tokyo, I was looking to encounter something real.”