Time Frames: Contemporary East Asian Photography

More than 40 rarely shown color and black-and-white photographs delve into various concepts of time, from a reflection on a legend or historical event, to a memory, missed moment, or a future imagined and anticipated.

Drawn primarily from the BMA’s collection, the exhibition’s photographs, books, prints, and a hand scroll featured artists born or working in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Many of the photographers began their careers in another field, such as photojournalism, commercial photography, architecture, sculpture, or filmmaking, but they all share a similar engagement with time as a visual reference or part of their creative process.

Among the 32 artists whose works were featured are Nobuyoshi Araki (Japanese, b. 1940), Bae Bien-U (Korean, b. 1950), Liu Bolin (Chinese, b. 1973), An-My Lê (American, b. Vietnam, 1960), Yao Lu (Chinese, b. 1967), Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938), and Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948). Masaru Tatsuki (Japanese, b. 1974) spent ten years with long-distance truckers who transform their vehicles into spectacular moving light displays such as the truck below featured in the exhibition. About the decade he spent with his subjects, the artist explains: “It simply takes time to really understand something.”