Born in Kyoto in 1951, Keiichi Tahara is a photographer of considerable talent who has earned a reputation belying his years. Based in Paris since 1972, he was the recipient of the Grand Prix for Young Photographers at the 1977 Arles International Photo-Festival. The exhibition at the stylish new La Foret Museum building in the Akasaka district of Tokyo offered a broad selection of Tahara’s works—specifically, those documenting the effect on European architecture of the turn-of-the-century explosion in artistic and esthetic expression often simply labeled fin de siècle.

This term embraces a number