Curated by Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam in collaboration with Tomo Kosuga, director of Masahisa Fukase Archives

The Sozzani Foundation presents “Masahisa Fukase, Private Scenes” the first Italian retrospective exhibition dedicated to the great Japanese photographer, curated by Foam Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam in collaboration with Tomo Kosuga, director of Masahisa Fukase Archives.

The work of Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase (Hokkaido, 1934 - Tokyo, 2012) remained largely inaccessible for over twenty years, following a tragic fall that left him with severe permanent brain damage. After his death, the archives were gradually opened, revealing a vast amount of unpublished material.

This retrospective exhibition in 2018 at the Foam Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam presents the most important works and publications, original prints, and documents from Masahisa Fukase Archives, spanning from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. Fukase incorporated his personal struggle against loss and depression into his work in a surprisingly playful way. His subjects are personal and very intimate: over the years, his wife Yoko, his dying father, and his beloved cat Sasuke regularly appeared in visual narratives sometimes comical, sometimes sinister.

Towards the end of his life, he increasingly turned the camera towards himself. The huge number of self-portraits, almost proto-selfies, testify to the unique, almost obsessive way in which the artist related to his surroundings and himself.