Photographs from the Private Collection of Margaret W. Weston

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Lot 71
  • 71

Hiromu Kira 1898-1991

Estimate
6,000 - 9,000 USD
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Description

  • Hiromu Kira
  • 'GLASSWARE'
on a double mount, signed by the photographer in pencil on the second mount, signed, titled, and annotated with his address by the photographer in pencil and with a Birmingham Photographic Society Exhibition label on the reverse, matted, 1928

Provenance

Christie's New York, 9 October 1997, Sale 8748, Lot 63

Acquired by Margaret W. Weston from the above

Exhibited

Birmingham, England, Photographic Society Exhibition, 1931

Literature

Another print of this image:

Dennis Reed, Japanese Photography in America, 1920-1940 (Los Angeles: Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, 1986, in conjunction with the exhibition at its George J. Doizaki Gallery), fig. xiii, p. 70

Catalogue Note

Glassware represents a departure from Kira's previously Pictorialist photography.  Moving to Los Angeles from Seattle in 1926, he attended Edward Weston’s 1927 and 1931 exhibitions organized by the Japanese-American artists' group, Shakudo-Sha, held in the area of the city known as Japantown.  His interest in the still life form may have been influenced by Weston; like Weston, he avoided retouching his prints and negatives, regarding the practice as manipulative.  Through periodicals and annuals, Kira was also aware of avant-garde photographic trends in Germany and Czechoslovakia. 

Beginning in 1928, Kira made a number of glassware studies, and these brought him significant recognition.  They were among the 73 photographs he exhibited in a total of 267 salons throughout the world between 1928 and 1932 and, no doubt, were a factor in his selection as a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain in 1929.