Baskets: Masterpieces of Japanese Bamboo Art 1850-2015

About Joe Earle

Joe Earle was Director of Japan Society Gallery in New York until 2012 and has held leadership positions in Asian art departments at the Victoria and Albert Museum London and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Over the past 38 years he has curated organized or written catalogues for numerous exhibitions of contemporary Japanese art craft and design including Japan Style (London 1980) Japanese Ceramics Today (the Kikuchi Collection London 1983) The Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art (London 1986) Visions of Japan (London 1991) Splendors of Meiji: Treasures of Imperial Japan (Wilmington DE and Portland OR 1999 and 2002) Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for the New Century (Boston and New York 2005 and 2006) New Bamboo (Boston and New York 2006 and 2008) Serizawa: Master of Japanese Textile Design (New York 2009) Bye Bye Kitty!!!: Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art (New York 2011) Fiber Futures: Japan's Textile Pioneers (New York 2011) New Forms New Voices: Japanese Ceramics from the Gitter-Yelen Collection (New Orleans 2017). He is now based in London. Raised in Switzerland Bertrand Stark set out on graduation from Paris University on a career with an investment bank which sent him straight to Hong Kong. From there his life as a banker took him to the top financial capitals of the world. When after ten years he was recalled to the bank's headquarters he decided to become a photographer. He embarked on his new career by assisting leading photographers in Germany the USA and France. After three years' intensive training he set up his own freelance practice in fashion. Now back in Asia he works in the world of fashion beauty and lifestyle photography contributing to fashion magazines such as Vogue Elle Harper's Bazaar Numero as well as undertaking advertising assignments for brands like L'Oreal Nivea Wella Opel Schwarzkopf and Shanghai Tang. His work has been exhibited at the Pin-Up Studio in Paris and at the Pingyao International Photography Festival and his photographs feature in a number of books on fashion and beauty. He teaches fashion photography at the Conde Nast Center for Fashion and Design in Shanghai.