BERLIN.- Shin Yanagisawa was born 1936, in Tokyo. He was part of the outstanding generation of japanese photographers from the 1960s and 1970s. This generation shaped our ideas and impressions with a new photographic view of contemporary japan as a country between tradition and the modern era – even until today. After studying at the famous Tokyo College of Photography in Shibuya, Yanagisawa started working as a freelance photographer. He became engaged in subjects of the landscape and their changes, the roughness of nature and the urban reality of big cities.

With his camera he bore down upon life itself, showed backstage-eroticism in a night club; and traced with his camera a winter love, of which we only can assume, was unique to him. Yanagisawa's series Traces of the City 1965 – 1970 (title of his only bigger, long time out of print book) reflects the feelings of a whole generation. This series was exhibited in a one-man show in Tokyo 1979. Beside of that, Yanagisawa took part in numerous group exhibitions, e.g. the important 15 Photographers Exhibition at Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art.

Only photography is also presenting a first monograph on Shin Yanagisawa outside of Japan, with a text by Yanagisawa On Photography, published in english for the first time. Yanagisawa's three earlier publications from the 1980s are long time out of print, but are on view in our gallery.

Only-Photography differs conceptually from most classical photo galleries – with the gallery, monographic solo exhibitions will be more the exception than the rule. Their aim, rather, is to organize three to four exhibitions per year in their gallery space and with/at related institutions, drawing from our thein extensive holdings of historical and anonymous photography and juxtaposing them with the works of contemporary photographers.

We will concentrate on exhibitions addressing themes in the areas of history, sociology, regional studies and architecture and thus highlighting the documentary aspect of photography through comparison and in the context of the respective era.