Steidlville

IN 1968, a magazine with the programmatic title Provoke was published in Tokyo by the photographer and writer Takuma Nakahira, the art critic Koji Taki and other members. Investigating the relation between photography and text, the magazine was an artistic and philosophical manifesto, responding to the upheavals of the late sixties. The participating photographers, among them Daido Moriyama (who joined Provoke with the second issue) searched for a radical photographic language.
Practically unknown in the West, Provoke magazine is now recognized as a turning point in post-war Japanese photography. It significantly influenced many young photographers of the time. Nobuyoshi Araki later recalled that \"I was jealous of Provoke, especially Moriyama\'s nudes in the second issue. (...) I wanted to join them but I wasn\'t allowed (...) So I worked alone.\" Provoke\'s radical quest to break with established forms of photography can be traced through the subsequent history of Japanese photography.
Originally published in very small editions (Provoke magazine had a print run of 1,000 copies), the publications reprinted in The Japanese Box are extremely rare today and almost impossible to find, even in Japan.