According to Hepburn romanization, Shiotani's adopted given name is written "Teikō". Many publications in English do not provide macrons, resulting in "Teiko". Following an informal convention, some other publications give it as "Teikoh". was a Japanese photographer whose work in the late 1920s and early 1930s in and near Tottori, where he lived, made him a major figure in Japanese pictorialism.
Despite living far from any metropolis, Shiotani was famous among photographers nationwide. He portrayed landscapes, seascapes, priests at a local temple, his family, and other quotidian matters and scenes; his images at times unmediated, at others exploiting lens aberration or using darkroom effects. Among the photographers directly influenced by him was Shōji Ueda, who lived nearby.
As ideals and fashions in photography changed, Shiotani's work was largely forgotten in postwar Japan until interest was reawakened by a 1975 book devoted to his work; he later became known outside Japan thanks to an exhibition of Japanese photography that toured Europe from 1979 to 1982. Many prints made by Shiotani survive in museum collections, and since 2016 four photobooks largely or exclusively dedicated to his work have been published in Japan.
Life and career
Early life
Sadayoshi Shiotani (, is the kyūjitai (a traditional but now obsolete form) of shio; the shinjitai (new and currently used form) is . Although most modern publications silently modernize, the book The Legend in Art Photography leaves intact the orthography of the prewar text that it reprints; and its collection (pp. 204–229) of prewar magazine articles by Shiotani shows consistent use of (not ). Shiotani Sadayoshi)Tomoko Takeuji, "Shiotani Teiko and Art Photography"; ; within Geijutsu shashin no jidai: Shiotani-Teikō-ten katarogu () = The Age of Art Photography: Shiotani Teiko Exhibition Catalogue. Mitaka, Tokyo: Mitaka City Gallery of Art and Mitaka City Sports and Culture Foundation, 2016. Pp. 17–23 (English); pp. 9–16 (Japanese). was born on 24 October 1899"Purofīru" (), Teiko Shiotani Memorial Photo Gallery. Accessed 10 January 2023. in Akasaki (since 2004 part of Kotoura), Tottori, to a family who owned a shipping agency.Noriko Tsutatani, "To things beloved – Shiotani Teikō 1899–1988" (in English); "Itoshiki mono e: Shiotani Teikō: 1899–1988" (in Japanese, ); respectively pp. 270–279 and pp. 201–208 within Itoshiki mono e. He was the eldest son; his paternal grandfather had held various important civic posts and been interested in photography.
As a young boy, Shiotani enjoyed drawing and was good at it. When he was 12 or 13, he received a Vest Pocket KodakDescription of the original model of the Vest Pocket Kodak: G. E. White, "History and development of the VPK ", The Vest Pocket Kodak. camera. Equipped with a simple meniscus lens, this folding camera used 127 film, a small format for the time, and was marketed as sufficiently compact to fit in a vest pocket and was popular in Japan."Teikō Shiotani: Teikō Shiotani: Album, 1923–1973: 1975"; pp. 178–181 within Ryūichi Kaneko and Ivan Vartanian, Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and '70s. When Shiotani was 13, he participated in a photography event at Karo () harbour in Tottori."Shiotani Teikō nenpu" (; Teikō Shiotani chronology); pp. 224–231 within Yume no kageri.
From 1912, Shiotani attended Kurayoshi Agricultural High School (now ). Powerfully built, he did well at judo. He graduated in 1917, whereupon he became serious about photography."Shiotani Teikō to geijutsu shashin kanren nenpu" (; Chronology of Teikō Shiotani and pictorialist photography), pp. 261–268 within The Legend in Art Photography. Like other users of the Vest Pocket Kodak, the teenage Shiotani was embarrassed when serious amateur photographers saw him using it; he soon supplemented it with a large format (90×130 mm) camera with a Carl Zeiss Tessar lens, although he continued to use the Vest Pocket Kodak (or at least its lens) for the rest of his life.
Shiotani's fellow photographers formed the Kōei Club in 1919, with over two hundred members. (Kōei, , means "light and shade".) Shiotani's first known attendance in a Kōei meeting was in 1921, and photographs of his appeared in its magazine Kōei from 1922.Though provincial (and only lasting from 1920 to 1925), Kōei was "an extremely high-quality journal, with . . . photographs reproduced using the collotype process". Noriko Tsutatani, "To things beloved – Shiotani Teikō 1899–1988" (in English, p. 277, n. 5); "Itoshiki mono e: Shiotani Teikō: 1899–1988" (in Japanese, , p. 207, n. 5); within Itoshiki mono e. Some issues of the magazine also showed a Roman-letter title: Kwoyei (using a romanization system that even then was archaic). Photographs by Shiotani (using the name Gyokkō Shiotani, ) published in Kōei are reproduced in Itoshiki mono e, pp. 212–213; his pair of articles (1922, 1923) about pinhole photography is reproduced in The Legend in Art Photography, pp. 204–205. Hokutō Saigō (), the key figure in Kōei, greatly encouraged Shiotani.
Shiotani became an enthusiastic user of the Vest Pocket Kodak, and in 1919 set up the "Vest Club" (i.e. Vest Pocket Kodak club; , Besuto Kurabu) in Akasaki, with 88 members. Perhaps thanks to his grandfather, he was freed from a career in the family shipping business and instead allowed to pursue photography.
Many Japanese amateur photographers of the time prized a painterly effect over detail – not necessarily Western-style painting, but often Japanese, and particularly of a .Ryūichi Kaneko, "Nihon no pikutoriarizumu: Fūkei e no manazashi" () = "The Pictorial Landscape in Japanese Photography"; pp. 7–11 (Japanese) and 12–16 (English) within Nihon no pikutoriarizumu: Fūkei e no manazashi = The Pictorial Landscape in Japanese Photography. Tokyo: Tokyo Museum of Photography, 1992. ; . The aim was geijutsu shashin, which, depending on context, could be translated as "artistic", "art", "salon" or "pictorialist" photography. The meniscus lens of the Vest Pocket Kodak did not permit detail, and photographers using it – notably Masataka Takayama, , , Mitsugi Arima () and Kōyō Yasumoto ()Ryūichi Kaneko, "Japanese photography in the early twentieth century" (pages not numbered) within Deborah Klochko, ed., Modern Photography in Japan 1915–1940. – would often remove an aperture limiter from around its lens (fūdo hazushi), thereby not only increasing the aperture by about two stops but also greatly softening the focus., "Fūdo hazushi" (; Removing the hood), chapter 4 (pp. 31–39) of Vesutan no tsukaikata (; How to use the Vest Pocket Kodak), Tokyo: Kodaisha, 1933. .Shōji Ueda, "Waga besutan renzu" (; My Vest Pocket Kodak lens), within "Watakushi no sofuto fōkasu tekunikku" () = "My soft focus technique", pp. 42–45 within Kamera Rebyū () = Camera Review () no. 28 (March 1983). Shiotani was attracted by the misty results and their resemblance to the works of a painter from Tottori whom he respected highly, .
In 1922, Shiotani married Sadako Inoue (, 1905–1988). They had three sons, Sōnosuke (, b. June 1923), Reiji (, November 1926 – March 1927) and Makoto (, August 1940 – September 1945); and two daughters, Yūko (, b. February 1930) and Yōko (, b. July 1934).
Prominence Shiotani's earliest known appearance in a major magazine was his Still life (Seibutsu), among contest winners in the January 1925 issue of . His Shadow (Kage) appeared in the March 1925 issue of Camera. As an editor responsible for selecting work for both magazines (and editor in chief of Geijutsu Shashin KenkyūMari Shirayama, "Major photography magazines': pp. 378–385 within The History of Japanese Photography), realized that Shiotani was unusually talented.
In August 1925, Shiotani and four other photographers made a trip around the coasts of Shimane Prefecture: Kaka (), Konami (), , Mihonoseki, and particularly . Much later, Shiotani told Shōji Ueda:
We took photographs for three days and I thought we would die. ... During that trip we didn't encounter a single woman. There were no inns; we just wrapped ourselves in straw mats and kept on walking. Finally we managed to get some curry and rice with duck eggs and it was delicious.Originally: . Quoted in Takayuki Kobayashi (), "Honshi sōkan 50-shūnen kinen tokushū: Besutan no aji o ikiru: Dai-ikkai getsurei shashin nyūsen Shiotani Teikō shi no baai" (; This magazine's 50th anniversary special: Living for the feel of the Vest Pocket Kodak: The case of Teikō Shiotani, winner of the first monthly exhibition), Asahi Camera, April 1976, pp. 161–164.
Despite these hardships, a number of photographs Shiotani took on the trip soon appeared in magazines. His Bird's-Eye View of a Village (Mura no chōkan) was published in the March 1926 issue of Geijutsu Shashin Kenkyū.A print from a similar but different negative was published elsewhere in 1926, and others with a wider view in 1927 and (from a photograph taken in 1925) in 1934; all carry the same title. See the plates and their captions on pp. 25–29 within Itoshiki mono e. It was influenced by Picasso and Braque's paintings from L'Estaque (which Shiotani knew of via the writings of Nakajima), and also Maeta's paintings of Paris. In 1926, he won the first prize in the first contest ever run by Asahi Camera, with Fishing Village (Gyoson), a photograph of Takohana.Takohana (or Takobana, either of which is spelt in Japanese ) – literally "Tako nose", and thus Cape Takohana – is in Shimane-chō, Matsue.
From 1925 to 1927, Shiotani was also one of the key members of a group of photographers that in 1928 formally became the Japan Photography Association (Nihon Kōga Kyōkai, ). A successor to the Japan Photographic Art Association (Nihon Kōga Geijutsu Kyōkai, ), this published a magazine (Gashū, ) and an annual, and held meetings and exhibitions. It was open to expressive distortions made with the camera, in the darkroom, or to the print: in addition to removing the aperture limiter from around the lens of a Vest Pocket Kodak, this might include deforming the printing paper under the enlarger, wiping prints with darker oil, and selectively removing this or adding powder to lighten areas.The three processes were named deforumashion (), aburae-gu egaki-okoshi-hō (), and zōkin-gake () respectively. The work of Shiotani and the three other key members – Yamamoto, Takayama and Watanabe – was highly regarded by Nakajima, whose publications made their work well knownNoriko Tsutatani, "Yume no kageri: Shiotani Teikō 1899–1988"; pp. 202–208 within Yume no kageri.Ryūichi Kaneko, "The origins and development of Japanese art photography", chapter (pp. 100–141) within The History of Japanese Photography, p. 111.Noriko Tsutatani (), 中嶋謙吉と日本光画協会の写真家たち = "Nakajima Kenkichi and the members of the Japan Photography Association"; pp. 155–162 (Japanese) and xxi–xxvi (English) within Geijutsu shashin no seika: Nihon no pikutoriarizumu jugyō no meihinten () = Masterpieces of Japanese Pictorial Photography. Tokyo: Tokyo Museum of Photography, 2011. ; . Catalogue of an exhibition held in the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, March–May 2011. (and who in 1933 published a how-to guide for the Vest Pocket KodakVesutan no tsukaikata (; How to use the Vest Pocket Kodak; ); five years later, Vesutan Pāretto no tsukaikata (; How to use the vest-pocket Pearlette; ). (The Pearlette was a near-copy by Konishiroku of Contessa-Nettel's Piccolette, itself derived from the Vest Pocket Kodak.)).