Kazuo Kitai, a major figure in Japanese photography, is finally receiving his first retrospective in France at the Maison de la culture du Japon in Paris, running until July 25. The exhibition features around 130 images spanning his career, from his early documentation of student protests in the 1960s to his later, more serene portraits of rural and suburban life. Kitai, now in his 80s, continues to create, recently reworking his original prints by tearing and repainting them with red or yellow, a radical gesture that echoes his early rebellious spirit.
This retrospective matters because it corrects a long-standing oversight in France, where Kitai has been overshadowed by contemporaries like Nobuyoshi Araki and Daidō Moriyama. His humanist lens captured a Japan in rapid transformation—from the anti-Narita airport peasant revolts to the vanishing rural landscapes and the rise of Tokyo's suburbs—offering a poignant, unsentimental record of a society in flux. The show also highlights Kitai's enduring relevance, as his recent, more abstract works demonstrate a continued artistic evolution that challenges conventional notions of photography.