Tamami Iinuma “Salut, Mr Bruno Taut”

LAG is pleased to present Salut, Mr Bruno Taut, an exhibition by Tamami Iinuma, on view from June 5 to June 27, 2026.

This exhibition commemorates the publication of Iinuma’s photobook of the same title, Salut, Mr Bruno Taut. Throughout her practice, Iinuma has explored architecture, cities, and landscapes as accumulations of human memory. In this series, she focuses on the “Siedlungen” (housing estates) designed by architect Bruno Taut in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, presenting works photographed in Berlin and Magdeburg between 2010 and 2014.

After moving to Berlin in 2008, Iinuma spent years visiting housing estates scattered throughout the outskirts of the city, gradually photographing their landscapes over an extended period of time. What she observed there was not limited to the formal qualities or documentary aspects of modernist architecture itself, but also the traces and layers of time that had accumulated through the buildings’ continued use in everyday life. The colors of walls, the colors of walls, traces of life around windows, the shadows of trees, parked cars, and marks left by repainting — these elements reveal architecture not as a static monument, but as a site where history and daily life intersect.

In the early stages of the project, Iinuma used a Mamiya RZ67 medium-format camera, a model often associated with portrait photography. For Iinuma, architecture appeared not merely as a structure, but as a subject possessing a presence equal to that of a human being. At the same time, repeated film malfunctions and developing troubles caused by Berlin’s subzero winters gradually led her practice toward digital photography. These shifts, too, are embedded within the temporal flow of the series itself.

The work also reflects the perspective of a Japanese artist observing German modernist architecture. Bruno Taut, who experienced exile in Japan and held a deep interest in Japanese culture, and Iinuma, who was born and raised in Tokyo before moving to Berlin, their perspectives seem to resonate across different times and places. We invite viewers to encounter Iinuma’s attention toward the layers of time embedded in architecture and urban landscapes, as well as the traces of human activity that remain within them.

*Two talk events will be held during the exhibition. On June 6, Kasumi Kugo (art historian) will join Iinuma for a conversation, followed by a dialogue with artist Naruki Oshima on June 18.