San Francisco  - San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art is putting the spotlight on Asian photography over the coming months, with two separate exhibits running until December 20.

"Photography Now: China, Japan, Korea" is a collection of 65 photos, many of them collected in the past two years, which are being shown for the first time. Many photos reflect the conflict between traditional values and modern western culture, according to the museum.

The second exhibit - "The Provoke Era: Postwar Japanese Photography" - provides about 100 works from post-World War II Japan, a period of societal upheaval that provided fertile ground for a generation of Japanese photographers, the museum said.

The exhibit spans the 1960s to the 1990s, including photos from the artists' group VIVO, which was organized in 1959 under inspiration from the French agency Magnum. The photographers on display include Shomei Tomatsu, who captured the aftermath of horror from the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and Ikko Narahara, known for his work with light and shadows. (dpa)