Masataka Takayama (高山 正隆, Takayama Masataka; 15 May 1895 - 14 April 1981) was one of the most prominent Japanesephotographers in the first half of the twentieth century.
Career
Takayama was born in Tokyo, Japan. As an amateur photographer, he published many of his works in the magazine Geijutsu Shashin Kenkyū (芸術写真研究), beginning in the 1920s. He remained an active photographer even after World War II.
He was talented at pictorialist (art) photography and took many photographs using a soft focuslens and deformation and "wipe-out" techniques.
Takayama usually used a Vest Pocket Kodak camera manufactured by Eastman Kodak camera, which was a very compact folding model taking 127 film equipped with a single-element lens (単玉, tangyoku).[a] These cameras and Japanese derivatives such as the Rokuoh-sha Pearlette and Minolta Vest) were popular in Japan at the time for snapshot use, which were called vestan (ベス単, besutan) cameras as a portmanteau: "ves" was taken from "vest" and "tan" from tangyoku. Takayama's works are thus said to belong to the "ves-tan" (besutan) school.[1]: 111, 113
Notes
^Although referred to as a single-element lens, the lens fitted to the most basic models of the Vest Pocket Kodak is a cemented doubletmeniscus lens. This lens was fitted with a dish-shaped lens hood that reduced the aperture to f/11; when the hood was removed, the lens had a pleasant soft focus effect caused by uncorrected spherical aberration.
(in Japanese) Exhibition Catalogue for The Founding and Development of Modern Photography in Japan (日本近代写真の成立と展開展), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (東京都写真美術館), 1995 (NO ISBN)
(in Japanese)Masataka Takayama and Taishō Pictorialism (『高山正隆と大正ピクトリアリズム』) Nihon no shashinka (日本の写真家, "Japanese Photographers"), volume 5. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten (岩波書店), 1998. ISBN4-00-008345-7[1]
