Provoke (magazine)

Provoke (Purovōku, プロヴォーク), with its subtitle of Provocative Materials for Thought (Shisō no tame no chōhatsuteki shiryō 思想のための挑発的資料), was an experimental small press Japanese photography magazine founded in 1968 by critic/photographers Kōji Taki () and Takuma Nakahira, photographer Yutaka Takanashi, and writer Takahiko Okada ().Daidō Moriyama joined with the second issue.Provoke was "a platform for a new photographic expression", "to free photography from subservience to the language of words", "that stood in opposition to the photography establishment". It was a quarterly magazine that also included poetry, criticism and photographic theory. Provoke has been described as having "lasted for only three issues" but with "profound effect upon Japanese photography in the 1970s and 80s," and is said to have "spread a completely new idea of photography in Japan."

The three issues of Provoke magazine were published on 1 November 1968, and 10 March and 10 August 1969, each in an edition of 1,000 copies.

The Provoke manifesto declared that visual images cannot completely represent an idea as words can, yet photographs can provoke language and ideas, "resulting in a new language and in new meanings"; the photographer can capture what cannot be expressed in words, presenting photographs as "documents" for others to read, hence Provoke's "provocative materials for thought" subtitle.

The visual style of the photographs in Provoke has been said to be, in Japanese, 'are-bure-boke', translated as 'grainy/rough, blurry, out-of-focus', a style already found in mainstream magazines such as Asahi Camera and Camera Mainichi. Nakahira and Moriyama had been experimenting with 'are-bure-boke' prior to their involvement in Provoke, and Moriyama's 12-part conceptual project "Akushidento (Accident)" for Asahi Camera in 1969 took the approach in new directions. There were other comparable radical magazines and groups at the time including Geribara 5, which published three books. Asahi Journal, Kikan shashin eizō (The Photo Image) and Design also served as platforms for avant garde photography in the 'are-bure-boke' style by Nakahira, Moriyama and others.

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