Torso as Ancient Sculpture

Shiihara Osamu carefully cropped and blocked an image of a female nude into a broken torso that resembles a Greek sculptural fragment. Responding to the lively discourse among Japanese artists around European avant-garde art, Shiihara produced a series of Surrealism-inspired photographs focused on the female figure. These images challenged expectations in imperial Japan that photogra-phy ought to render the human body with documentary realism, leading critics to describe the work as subversive and “modern.”