NEW YORK.- Japan Society Gallery presents Shōmei Tōmatsu: Skin of the Nation, the first major retrospective of the preeminent postwar Japanese photographer Shōmei Tōmatsu, remains on view through January 2, 2005. After its premiere in New York, Shōmei Tōmatsu: Skin of the Nation travels to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (May 21 - August 29, 2005); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (October 15, 2005 - February 12, 2006); and the Fotomuseum, Winterthur (September 1 - November 12, 2006), and other venues through 2006.

The exhibition offers the first comprehensive survey of Tōmatsu's work, exploring his position within the postwar Japanese avant-garde and his influential and critical role in the development of modern Japanese photography. Shōmei Tōmatsu: Skin of the Nation is drawn largely from Tōmatsu's collection and features approximately 260 photographs spanning fifty years of the artist's poignant examination of the people, cities and rural landscapes of postwar Japan. The exhibition is co-curated by Sandra S. Phillips, senior curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and writer and photographer Leo Rubinfien, current fellow at the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University.

The exhibition features famous images from each of Tōmatsu's major series, including works from the iconic Nagasaki 11:02, a historic documentation and humanistic exploration of the lives of A-bomb survivors in Nagasaki; Chewing Gum and Chocolate, an impressionistic record of Americanization in postwar Japan, with its conflicting seductions of military threat and Hollywood glamour. The exhibition begins with photographic essays on the fragmentary vestiges of old Japan and concludes with pictures of Japan's transformation, its huge economic success, and the political and cultural changes and challenges that accompanied that success. All these series were originally published as essays in magazines; the photographs are meant to be seen and appreciated in a serial, almost cinematic, format.

Accompanying the exhibition is the catalogue Shōmei Tōmatsu: Skin of the Nation, the first major English language publication surveying Tōmatsu's career, published by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with Yale University Press. The subtitle Skin of the Nation is a literal and metaphorical reference to the surfaces that have appeared in countless pictures throughout Tōmatsu's career. For the artist, the skin is more than just a surface, it is a kind of map in which one can read the story of Japan.