The Tempo Of A Nation

Forget the turning of the leaves in Hibiya Park — the real sight to behold in Tokyo this autumn will be German Contemporary Photography. Running from Oct. 25 to Dec. 18 at Tokyo’s National Museum of Modern Art (momat.go.jp), this sweeping exhibition comprises work shot over 40 years by a remarkably diverse group of photographers.

One common theme is Germany’s sudden rise (and subsequent decline) as an industrial power; look out for the grim, 1960s factory pictures by Bernd and Hilla Becher (the oldest work on show) or the disturbing aridity of 404 Not Found

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) Hans Christian Schink’s images of an empty autobahn (among the newest photographs displayed). Even when the subject matter isn’t Germany — as in Andreas Gursky’s vast photographs of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange — there is often an underlying fascination with the workings of capitalism.

Among the cheerier works are striking portraits of children by Loretta Lux, including the one pictured here. In Lux’s beguiling images, children gaze outward in a symbolic expression of young life seeking to know itself — work that’s as emblematic of the new Germany as photos of rusting factories are of the old.