Yasufumi Nakamori discusses Modernism in Japanese design

Yasufumi Nakamori, associate curator of photography at Houston's Museum of Fine Arts and lecturer at Rice University's Department of Art History, appeared April 2 at Texas A&M Department of Architecture's 2012 Spring Lecture Series.He is the author of "Katsura: Picturing Modernism in Japanese Architecture: Photographs by Ishimoto Yasuhiro" for which he won the 2011 Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions. The book revisits a collection of photographs of an elegant 17th-century imperial villa in Kyoto that foreshadows Western Modern design.Nakamori's recent publications include "Utopia/Dystopia: Construction and Destruction in Photography and Collage," "Tange Kenzo's Early Snapshots and the Tradition Debate," a forthcoming anthology of writings on the architect Tange Kenzo, and "Kawazoe Noboru: Shinkenchiku and the Tradition Debate."For more about the spring 2012 lecture series, visit http://one.arch.tamu.edu/news/2012/1/23/featured-spring-series/.