My project focuses on the Japanese performance art practice Butoh. When I first came across Butoh I became struck by how different it looked to any other type of visual performance I had seen. The development of Butoh has a deeply complex background, linked to a variety of themes. The art form itself was created in Japan in the 1950’s and 60’s, and is often described as having begun as a ‘refraction of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and a protest against Western values.
Butoh, often described as; “Dance of Darkness”, or the “Dance of The Dark Soul”, focuses on the most difficult sides of humanity. Butoh also deals with many of the challenges that the medium of photography, and particularly documentary photography and photojournalism grapples with. The many tangents between the two subjects include dilemmas of representation in relation to culture, identity, suffering and trauma.
In 2016, I first travelled to Japan to explore the presence of Butoh today. Through photographing Butoh using methods inspired by the avant-garde movement it grew out of, highlighting an immersive combination of movement and abstraction, I wish to visually recreate a sense of the traumatic sentiments that Butoh aims to express.
