The Night Is Still Young

Photography By Tomoaki Hata
Essay By Eric.C.Shiner ( Interim Director of Andy Warhol Museum)
& Simone Fukayuki ( Drag Queen, Chansonnier )
powerHouse Books(US/Europe) ISBN: 978-1-57687-552-0
Akaaka Art Publishing inc. (Japan)ISBN:978-4-903545-60-8
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Tomoaki Hata Solo Exhibition:
"The Night Is Still Young"
@ MIYAKO YOSHINAGA Art Prospects
10.03.2011-09.04.2011
547 West 27th Street, 2nd Floor, NYC 10001 Contact: tel. +1 212 268 7132  info@myartprospects.com

Tomoaki Hata ”The Night is Still Young”
March 10– April 9, 2011
MIYAKO YOSHINAGA art prospects is pleased to present The Night Is Still Young, an exhibition by Tokyo- and Los Angeles-based photography artist Tomoaki Hata. The exhibition will run from March 10 to April 9, 2011. The opening and book-launching party will be held Thurdsday, March 10, 6-8PM.
 

In recent news headlines, Japan, once Asia’s economic superpower, has been portrayed as having lost its edge. Meanwhile, from the late 1990s to the early 2000s it became home to a vigorous burst of self-expression by one of the most secretive subcultures of Japanese society. Gender-bending men and women, who in their dayto-day lives conform to societal norms, began to gather weekly at small nightclubs in the gay district of Osaka to cut loose and be themselves. The epicenter of this phenomenon was a bar called Explosion, where radically creative, smart, and witty drag queens combined art and activism in a talent show format.
 

In 1996, Hata, then a college student, began documenting these exuberant late-night parties and continued to do so until 2004. Now considered a rare chronicle of the nation’s first drag queen movement, these photographs were edited as a monograph entitled The Night is Still Young and published both in Japanese (Akaakasha) and English (powerHouse Books) in 2010. Our exhibition follows on the heel of its Tokyo debut last October and presents a selection of 25 images that highlight the movement’s heyday in the early 2000s.
The glamour and self-assurance of Hata’s drag queens, both on and off-stage, come to life in these color photographs, but along with the glitter, Hata also shows the seedy side of the life and explores moments of loneliness and despair. Like Boogie, a street photographer he admires, Hata gives himself up to the stream of happenings, observing the outrageous, out-of-control crowd with calm affection. Interspersed with the highenergy photographs of partiers and onlookers, Hata zeros in on an intimate portrayal of a male couple (originally shot for the City of Osaka’s safe-sex campaign). The Night Is Still Young provides an ardent testimony of the time, through which we may glimpse not only the make-believe extravaganza but also the poignant humanity underlying this obscure world.
 

Born in 1974, Tomoaki Hata works primarily in Los Angeles and Tokyo. After more than ten years of education in law, sociology, media studies, cultural studies, and art criticism in Japan, Hata began his career as a photographer, shooting Japan’s groundbreaking HIV/AIDS benefit dance parties as well as for Japan’s gay porn industry. Hata’s photography is part of the Collection Lambert in Avignon, France and is included in other private collections worldwide.