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At the Limits of the Gaze: Selected writings by Takuma Nakahira
At the Limits of the Gaze collects the writings of photographer and critic Takuma Nakahira in English for the first time. A crucial figure within the history of Japanese photography, Nakahira is best known outside of Japan as a founding member of Provoke, the experimental magazine of photographs, essays, and poetry, first published in 1968, and for his important photobook For a Language to Come (1970).
Throughout a decades-long career, Nakahira raised incisive questions about visual culture and politics in both his photography and his writing. As part of a dynamic moment of artistic and political experimentation in Tokyo, he wrote on a range of topics hardly limited to photography: art, film, journalism, literature, politics, television, and more. Nakahira’s essays brim with urgency, relentlessly interrogating photography’s relationship to power, the connection between language and images, and the gaze. As editors and translators Daniel Abbe and Franz Prichard write, Nakahira’s essays “both suggest doubt about, and possibilities for, a photographically mediated reckoning with the world.”
Throughout a decades-long career, Nakahira raised incisive questions about visual culture and politics in both his photography and his writing. As part of a dynamic moment of artistic and political experimentation in Tokyo, he wrote on a range of topics hardly limited to photography: art, film, journalism, literature, politics, television, and more. Nakahira’s essays brim with urgency, relentlessly interrogating photography’s relationship to power, the connection between language and images, and the gaze. As editors and translators Daniel Abbe and Franz Prichard write, Nakahira’s essays “both suggest doubt about, and possibilities for, a photographically mediated reckoning with the world.”
164 pages, Paperback
Expected publication January 13, 2026
About the author
Takuma Nakahira
33 books2 followersTakuma Nakahira is a Japanese photographer and photography critic.
While working as an editor at the art magazine Today's Focus (Gendai no me), Nakahira published his work under the name of Aki Yuzuki. Up through the publication of the phonebook For a Language to Come (Kitarubeki kotoba no tame ni) in 1970, Nakahira had been well versed in a style in the vein of Daido Moriyama's Are, bure, boke (rough, blurred, and out of focus). In 1973, he published Why an Illustrated Botanical Dictionary (Naze, shokubutsu zukan ka), shifting away from the style of Are, bure, boke and instead moving towards a type of catalog photography stripped of the sentimentality of handheld, or a photography resembling the illustrations of reference books.
While working as an editor at the art magazine Today's Focus (Gendai no me), Nakahira published his work under the name of Aki Yuzuki. Up through the publication of the phonebook For a Language to Come (Kitarubeki kotoba no tame ni) in 1970, Nakahira had been well versed in a style in the vein of Daido Moriyama's Are, bure, boke (rough, blurred, and out of focus). In 1973, he published Why an Illustrated Botanical Dictionary (Naze, shokubutsu zukan ka), shifting away from the style of Are, bure, boke and instead moving towards a type of catalog photography stripped of the sentimentality of handheld, or a photography resembling the illustrations of reference books.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 13, 2025
At the beginning of this year I obtained and read the complete translations of PROVOKE on sort of a whim after learning about the magazine’s (short-lived) existence. I was not fully prepared for the impact those issues would come to have on me - they were a revelation. As I’ve continued to digest both the photographs and writings therein since then, they have become a guiding light - if not the very foundation - for my central attitude towards art and what value it may have in a capitalist world. In short, the stated intention of PROVOKE was successful for me.
This collection of essays by Nakahira is his ultimate declaration of PROVOKE’s failure.
I don’t really know how to begin with reviewing this (especially given my habit to rush to review a book before giving myself ample time to digest it), but I can at least start by saying this is an excellent collection. Kudos to the translators and editors, the dense nature of these essays was not encumbered in the slightest by formatting or lack of coherent translation (as far as I can tell), and the clarifications of specific Japanese words used in the original text were also well received and appreciated.
The essays themselves, all originally published in the 1970s (if I remember correctly), have certainly been justified by the passage of time. Nakahira’s identification of the “pseudo-reality” of images constructed my capitalist media are no less poignant now than they were over 50 years ago. His focused line of accusation and questioning towards the modern photographer and their role in the world is as damning as it is desperate for redemption. The dialectical identification of the world as the meeting of the gaze between the self and things, at least in relation to photography, is something I will be contemplating heavily as I continue to build my own work.
Some of these essays are scholastic epics (“Why an Illustrated Botanical Guide?” and the subsequent response to a critical letter sent to him in its wake). Some are direct, principled critiques of specific photographers (his essays on Eugène Atget and Walker Evans). Some read like Borges (maybe this is a personal stretch, but this I felt about “The Will Toward History: Surrealism’s Potential Power”). And they culminate in a beautiful recounting of his ultimate (at the time) rejection of photography with the burning of his prints and negatives on a moonlit beach.
All this to say: Nakahira’s writings will not be leaving my mind for some time.
This collection of essays by Nakahira is his ultimate declaration of PROVOKE’s failure.
I don’t really know how to begin with reviewing this (especially given my habit to rush to review a book before giving myself ample time to digest it), but I can at least start by saying this is an excellent collection. Kudos to the translators and editors, the dense nature of these essays was not encumbered in the slightest by formatting or lack of coherent translation (as far as I can tell), and the clarifications of specific Japanese words used in the original text were also well received and appreciated.
The essays themselves, all originally published in the 1970s (if I remember correctly), have certainly been justified by the passage of time. Nakahira’s identification of the “pseudo-reality” of images constructed my capitalist media are no less poignant now than they were over 50 years ago. His focused line of accusation and questioning towards the modern photographer and their role in the world is as damning as it is desperate for redemption. The dialectical identification of the world as the meeting of the gaze between the self and things, at least in relation to photography, is something I will be contemplating heavily as I continue to build my own work.
Some of these essays are scholastic epics (“Why an Illustrated Botanical Guide?” and the subsequent response to a critical letter sent to him in its wake). Some are direct, principled critiques of specific photographers (his essays on Eugène Atget and Walker Evans). Some read like Borges (maybe this is a personal stretch, but this I felt about “The Will Toward History: Surrealism’s Potential Power”). And they culminate in a beautiful recounting of his ultimate (at the time) rejection of photography with the burning of his prints and negatives on a moonlit beach.
All this to say: Nakahira’s writings will not be leaving my mind for some time.
Displaying 1 of 1 review