This project aims to make the photographs and archive of Mitsutoshi Hanaga widely available to the public with an exhibition and related events.
An extensive collection of more than 30,000 unsorted works, including photographs of avant-garde art, underground theater, events, environmental pollution issues, student movements, Butoh and commune activity, are to be archived and made public.
The project aims to disseminate these valuable records to the world not just as the archive of Mitsutoshi Hanaga as an individual, but as a document of the realities of cultural and artistic activity in the Tokyo art and underground scenes from the 1960s to the 1980s, and the avant-garde of the time.
【Mitsutoshi Hanaga】
1933 Born in Otsuka, Tokyo.
1958 Graduated from Bunka Gakuin Art Department. Published photographs about social problems, avant-garde artworks and performances in photo magazines and art magazines. Since ‘60, he had actively taken documentary photo of young artists, small theater movement, Butoh (Contemporary Japanese dance), environmental pollution, and student protest.
1964 Published photos of young artists in “Life” and “Life International”.
1982 Exhibit photographs in Festival d’Avignon in France.
1983 Invited to photograph exhibition at Pompidou Centre in Paris.
1984 Solo exhibition at Paris headquarters of UNESCO. Group exhibition at Gallery White in Israel. Invited to Venice Biennale of Video.
1985 Participate in Butoh festival. Invited to Horizont Festival in Berlin.
1999 Died in December.
2014 Art Fair Tokyo 2014 (Booth:L46, Gallery Kochuten, AOYAMA|MEGURO) Introduced his documentary works at the exhibition, “Total Recall – works of Mitsutoshi Hanaga- (1959-1999)”
“Mitsutoshi Hanaga” (Gallery Kochuten)
2015 “The documentation photograph of the Japanese avant-garde art and performance by Mitsutoshi HANAGA /1964-1973” AOYAMA|MEGURO
Mitsutoshi Hanaga Archives Project
AOYAMA|MEGURO(Meguro City, Tokyo)