Tsugio Tajima

Tsugio Tajima (田島二男, Tajima Tsugio; 1903–2002) was a Japanese photographer active in Nagoya's avant-garde photography circles. He was a member of Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde, alongside photographers including Kansuke Yamamoto, and later participated in Group Spiral and the Japan Federation of Subjective Photography. His work was included in the 1940 photobook Mesemu zoku, one of the key publications associated with Nagoya's wartime Surrealist photography. Later exhibition materials, including the 2022 Tokyo Photographic Art Museum exhibition Avant-Garde Rising: The Photographic Vanguard in Modern Japan, have continued to present this body of work.

Works from this period include Azusa (1932), Cultivated Face (1934), Cyrano (1939), and Work A (1940). In her reading, such works exemplify a Nagoya-based approach in which worn surfaces and common-use materials were isolated through the close-up and transformed into ambiguous visual forms.

Later work After the war, Tajima remained active in photography. MEM's profile states that he later participated in Group Spiral and the Japan Federation of Subjective Photography. The same profile notes that he held his first solo exhibition in 1985. It also identifies his works as being held by the Nagoya City Art Museum and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.

One documented example of his later activity is the photograph Autumn (Aki), dated 1955; MEM notes an inscription on the verso identifying it with the first Spiral exhibition in Nagoya in October 1955.

Position in Nagoya photography Tajima is relevant to the history of Photography in Nagoya as a figure linking the city's prewar avant-garde experimentation with later postwar photographic activity. His career is also relevant to the study of avant-garde photography in Japan and Surrealism in Japan, particularly through his role in Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde and his proximity to photographers such as Kansuke Yamamoto and Minoru Sakata.