Masao Gozu: Windows and Bars

The first US museum exhibition to highlight the singular practice of Masao Gozu (Japanese, b. 1946), Windows and Bars presents a focused selection of his photographs dating from the 1970s through today. The exhibition highlights key works from Gozu’s Windows and Harry’s Bar series, opening apertures onto the city’s past and offering a quiet rumination on the sweep of time. Born in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, Gozu emigrated to New York City in 1970. Walking the city streets, he began to photograph the city’s inhabitants through the windows of tenement buildings, from Bay Ridge to Little Italy. An extended architectural study, the series suggests the window as a proscenium through which to glimpse the theater of everyday life. Gozu’s subjects rarely meet the gaze of the camera; ambiguous protagonists, they watch scenes unfolding outside of the frame. Gozu continued this series until 2004, taking thousands of images. He recently began returning to these locations to photograph them anew, capturing dramatic shifts and, in some cases, surprising continuity in the city’s built landscape.

Masao Gozu (Japanese, b. 1946) is a photographer and sculptor based in New York City. He graduated from the Toyo Arts School in 1970, and in 1971 was awarded the Max Beckmann scholarship to the Brooklyn Museum Art School, where he studied from 1971 to 1973. Gozu has held solo exhibitions at The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Toyoshina Modern Art Museum, Azumino, Japan; OK Harris, New York; Nikon Salon, Tokyo; Howl Art Gallery, New York; Galerie Pons, Paris; Court Tree Collective, Brooklyn; and Grand Central Terminal, New York, and has been included in group exhibitions at The Margulies Collection at the WAREhOUSE, Miami; Islip Art Museum; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; Abrons Art Center, New York; and Shanghai Art Museum, among other venues. His work is included in the collections of The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; New Orleans Museum of Art; Margulies Collection, Miami; Musée National d'Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Gozu is the recipient of Le prix special du jury, Mois de la photo 90, Paris (1990) and the 10th Nobuo Ina Prize, Japan (1985).