"Born in 1930 in Nagoya, Japan, Shomei Tomatsu came of age during the devastation of World War II. As a teenager he defied air-raid sirens to watch B-29 bombers roaring overhead; in 1950, as a university student, he began to take his first photographs. Drawing deliberately on the legacy of Surrealism and the Western documentary tradition, the self-taught photographer quickly emerged as one of his generation's most sensitive observers of postwar Japan." "This catalogue - the first comprehensive publication on Tomatsu to appear in English - includes essays addressing his fifty-year career, his artistic influences, and his historical context. A selection of excerpts from Tomatsu's own writings, many of which have never appeared in English, offers an intimate encounter with the issues and themes addressed in his photographs."--BOOK JACKET.