Glass with Two White Roses, circa 1920
Vintage gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches
September 26, 2022
This elegant picture is a perfect example of Taizo Kato’s mastery of the art of the still life. The delicate balance of the composition and the way that he captures light as it caresses the surfaces—gleaming in straight lines on the glass and falling softly on the translucent rose petals—recalls the very best of French still life painting
Due to the profound disruption of the lives of Japanese-American photographers as a result of their detention during WWII, their contribution to pre war photography was obscured unitl recent decades. Prints are rare due to the wartime confiscation of their property. Taizo Kato is one of most important among this generation of photographers whose legacy is being rediscovered, demonstrated by the Whitney’s inclusion of a recently acquired Kato still life in their current exhibition: At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism
