Hiroji Kubota

From March 3 to May 22, 2016, Westlicht in Vienna is presenting a retrospective of works by Magnum photographer Hiroji Kubota. The exhibition is accompanied by a book publication. For his Hiroji Kubota Photographer project, Kubota (*1939) put together a selection of his best photographs, taken from a portfolio of around four million black and white and colour photographs.

The retrospective includes around 100 pictures taken by the Japanese photographer over a period of fifty years. The exhibition displays images of the US civil rights movement in the sixties and seventies, and from his journeys around Asia: Kubota was there to document the fall of Saigon, as well as China following the Cultural Revolution. He also took pictures capturing life in North Korea and in Japan.

In 1961, Kubota had accompanied Elliott Erwitt, Burt Glinn and René Burri around Tokyo as a translator and driver. The Magnum photographers gifted him with a Leica camera and Cartier-Bresson’s book, The Decisive Moment, which inspired him to focus increasingly on photography himself. He eventually decided to go free-lance in 1965, becoming a Magnum member at the beginning of the seventies.

Further information on the exhibition at WestLicht and on Facebook.