Alive

by Seiichi Furuya, Monika Faber (Contributor)

Seiichi Furuya's photographs relentlessly highlight the cruel aspect of "shooting" a photograph. It is a materialistic act of severing the familiar relationship between the subject and the object, as well as the viewer and the object. Furuya is a photographer who totally excludes any lyrical vagueness from his images, even when his most intimate moments or his late wife are the subject. His work deploys a sharp tension that can seem like a cutting knife. Thus it seems no coincidence that he has taken up the theme of severance in his Border series, in which he shot the border zone between Austria, where he lived, and the Eastern European nations, and Wall , where he shot the Berlin Wall from the Eastern side before its collapse. In these works, the importance lies not in the old-fashioned melodramatic tragedy of crossing a boundary, but in the fact that the place in question is the remnant of an historical severance. This volume catalogues work Furuya has created over the past 25 years, in Europe, Japan, and the United States, including his latest series, which concentrates on his own neighborhood of Graz, transforming in into images of intense color and magical beauty.
Essay by Moika Faber. Hardcover, 9.5 x 12.5 in./176 pgs / 90 color and 30 duotone

176 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2004

About the author

Seiichi Furuya was born in Izu, Japan, in 1950. He left the port of Yokohama to travel to Europe on the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1973, after graduating from Tokyo Polytechnic University in 1972. He lived in Vienna until he moved to Graz in 1975. There he met Christine Gössler (born 1953) in February 1978. The couple married in May of the same year in Seiichi’s hometown Izu in Japan. Their son, Komyo-Klaus, was born in 1981. In 1982, they moved to Vienna so that Christine could study drama. In 1984, Seiichi took a job as an interpreter and the family moved to Dresden, East Germany; and then in 1985, to East Berlin.

In late 1982, Christine began to exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia. In 1983, she entered a hospital in Graz for treatment; she had to interrupt her acting studies and has since been hospitalized from time to time. Shortly after noon on October 7th, 1985, the 36th anniversary of the founding of the German Democratic Republic, Christine threw herself from a window on the 9th floor of the apartment building where the family lived. Seiichi continued to work as an interpreter in East Berlin until 1987. Afterwards he returned to Graz.

Since 1975, Furuya has had numerous exhibitions, both in Japan and overseas, at such venues as: Forum Stadtpark (Graz, Austria), Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland), Albertina Museum (Vienna, Austria), Tokyo Photographic Art Museum Museum (Tokyo, Japan). He has published several photo books featuring Christine, starting with his Mémoires 1978-1988 (Camera Austria, 1989) and continuing with Mémoires 1995 (Scalo Books, 1995), Christine Furuya-Gössler, Mémoires 1978-1985 (Korinsha Press, 1997), Portrait (Fotohof, 2000), Last Trip to Venice (self-published, 2002), Mémoires 1983 (Akaaka Art Publishing, 2006), Mémoires. 1984-1987 (Izu Photo Museum/Camera Austria, 2010), Border (spector, 2014), WHY DRESDEN 1984/2015 (spector, 2017). The latest publication Face to Face (Chose Commune) was published in 2020.

What’s more, he has been active in a wide range of projects: he was one of the founders of the photography magazine Camera Austria and has also curated exhibitions introducing Japanese photographers to Europe, such as Daido Moriyama, (Graz, 1980), Shomei Tomatsu: Japan 1952-1981 (Graz, 1984), Nobuyoshi Araki: Akt-Tokyo 1971-1991 (Graz, 1992), Keep in Touch. Positions in Japanese Photography (Graz, 2003).