Provoke: A Critical Analysis of a Japanese Photography Magazine

This dissertation evaluates the significance of a series of four critical Japanese photography publications, referred to here as Provoke. First published in 1968, Provoke consisted of a run of three quarterly journal issues, each bearing the same title as the series: Provoke. The series ceased publication in 1970 with the fourth Provoke publication, entitled Mazu tashika rashisa no sekai o sutero: Shashin to gengo no shiso [First, abandon the world of pseudo-certainty: Thought on photography and language].
Actively drawing on Western theory and literature, Provoke members-photographers Nakahira Takuma, Takanashi Yutaka, and Moriyama Daido; critic-photographer, Taki Koji; and poet Okada Takahiko-aimed to create visual images that would reveal a world indescribable by conventional language. The term are-bure-boke, which means grainy, blurred, and out of focus, was coined to describe their radical photographs, many of which look as though they were taken by accident and appear to be of nothing in particular.
I argue that Provoke members not only challenged the aesthetics of existing photography genres, but also illuminated the very notion of photography itself. Their deconstructivist attitudes gave rise to photographs that were taken in the midst of unrehearsed settings, as well as developed and edited in rather random operations. Their process-oriented photography went hand in hand with the periodical style of the series, revealing the evolution of members' photography and ideas as each of the four publications was published. Rather than consider photography an end product of photographers' visualization, Provoke members demonstrated photography's intricate intertwining with the production process, beginning with taking photographs, extending through to developing prints, and ending with publishing the publications.
I explore the material aspects of Provoke and First, Abandon the World of Pseudo-certainty as well as examine the publications' photographs. By doing so, I also argue that the publications are more than journals and a book: they belong to a multi-faceted medium including photobooks and artists' book. The publications' strong graphic take on photography and the photographers' engagement in the relationship between photography and language made the photographic publications unique among other commercial photography magazines and photobooks.