Japan Photographers

Tomishige Rihei (born Shinokura Rihei, 1837–1922) is one of the most significant figures in Kyushu's photographic history.

Yokoyama Matsusaburo was born in 1838 on Etorofu Island in the Kuril archipelago (present-day Russian territory), into a merchant family.

Yasu Kohei appears in the record of Meiji photography as a figure connected to the development of studio and regional photographic practice in modern Japan.

Kamei Koreaki was a Japanese photographer and aristocratic patron active in the late Meiji period, remembered above all for the role he played in introducing and supporting Pictorialist ideas in Japan.

Kajima Seibei (1866-1924) was one of the most successful studio photographers of the Meiji period and a central figure in the history of photographic portraiture in Tokyo.

Torii Ryuzo was a Japanese anthropologist and photographer whose work is crucial to understanding the relationship between photography, ethnography, and imperial knowledge in modern East Asia.

Fukuhara Shinzo was one of the central figures in the formation of modern photographic art in Japan.

Nojima Yasuzo was one of the most important Japanese photographers of the interwar period and a key figure in the move from pictorial softness toward a more rigorous modern photographic language.

Nakayama Iwata was a major figure in the development of modern photography in Japan, associated with commercial, portrait, and avant-garde-inflected practices in the interwar years.

Yasui Nakaji is one of the central figures of modern Japanese photography.

Ken Domon's postwar call for "realist photography" grew out of two dissatisfactions: the salon photography of the prewar years, with its emphasis on technical prettiness, and his own experience participating in wartime propaganda imagery.

Takeji Iwamiya developed a photographic practice on the border between document and formal inquiry, focusing on Japanese temples, gardens, craft objects, Buddhist sculpture, and vernacular tools.

Hasegawa Denjiro appears in the record of modern Japanese photography as a figure connected to the interwar photographic field, especially to the spread of modern photographic practice and discourse.

Suzuki Hachiro belongs to the generation of Japanese photographers working in the interwar period when photography was being redefined through modernist experimentation, publishing, and urban visual culture.

Kanamaru Shigene was an important figure in modern Japanese photography, active as both photographer and critic in the interwar period.

Ueda Shoji developed one of the most distinctive photographic languages in modern Japan.

Shomei Tomatsu made postwar Japan itself into his subject.

Born in 1933 and died in 2021, Kikuji Kawada is known as a member of VIVO and as the maker of The Map (1959–1965), one of the defining photobooks of postwar Japanese photography.

Born in 1934 and deceased in 2012, Masahisa Fukase is known for intensely personal photography centered on family, his wife Yoko, solitude, and psychic collapse.

Daido Moriyama was born in Ikeda, Osaka, in 1938 into a family whose frequent moves — Tokyo, Hiroshima, Chiba, Shimane, Osaka — gave him what he later described as an instinct for wandering that became foundational to his practice.

Kageyama Koyo was a Japanese photographer associated with modern and documentary-oriented photographic culture in the interwar and wartime decades.

Nobuyoshi Araki built his art from the most intimate material available: his own life.

Born in 1921 and deceased in 2022, Hideo Haga spent decades recording festivals, folklore, and vernacular custom across Japan at a moment when rapid modernization threatened to erase them.

Takeyoshi Tanuma recorded postwar Japanese civic life and the transformation of Tokyo across more than sixty years, beginning in the immediate aftermath of the war.

Born in Yamagata in 1933, Eikoh Hosoe developed theatrical and symbolic black-and-white series through collaboration with dancers and writers in postwar Japanese avant-garde culture.

Born in 1940 and deceased in 2024, Kishin Shinoyama became known for a vast practice ranging from celebrity portraiture and nude photography to architecture, magazines, and photobooks.

Japanese photographer, born in 1939.

Japanese photographer and artist, born in 1948.

Japanese photographer, born in 1940 and died in 2019.

Japanese photographer, born in 1946.

Japanese photographer, born in 1954.

Japanese photographer, born in 1950.

Japanese photographer, born in 1947 in Gunma and raised in Yokosuka.

Japanese photographer and critic, born in 1938 and died in 2015.

Japanese documentary photographer, born in 1948.

Japanese photographer born in 1957, originally trained in sculpture and later active as a photographer and educator.

Japanese photographer born in 1965.

Japanese photographer born in 1958 in Rikuzentakata, Iwate.

Japanese photographer, writer on photography, and editor born in 1936.

Japanese photographer born in 1972 in Shiga Prefecture.

Japanese photographer born in 1962 in Tokyo.

Japanese photographer born in 1972 in Shiga and based in Tokyo.

Japanese artist born in 1951 in Osaka, working across photography, self-portraiture, performance, and appropriation-based installation.

Japanese photographer born in 1962, based for long periods in France, known for conceptually structured photographic series and experimental darkroom processes.

Japanese photographer and writer born in 1973, known from the 1990s onward for self-portraiture, family nudity, feminist critique, and later writing on photography and gender.

Lieko Shiga (born 1980 in Aichi) is a Japanese photographer whose Rasen Kaigan project grew from long-term collaboration with residents of Kitakama, Miyagi.

Mika Ninagawa (born 1972 in Tokyo) is a photographer and film director whose work crosses photography, cinema, and installation through saturated color, flowers, goldfish, and portraiture.

Noriko Hayashi (born 1983) is a documentary photographer who works on underreported social issues, including bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan and Yazidi prayer.

Taiji Matsue (born 1963 in Tokyo) is a Japanese photographer who photographs the earth’s surface while excluding the horizon and sky and using frontal light to suppress shadow.

Daisuke Yokota (born 1983 in Saitama) is a Japanese photographer who repeatedly develops, scans, rephotographs, burns, folds, and damages film and prints, making the materiality of photography itself the subject.

Tomishige Tokuji is a documented but sparsely recorded figure in the history of Meiji photography.