Masashi Asada is a photographer who treats photography as the act of taking, looking at, keeping, and returning — from Asadake, in which the family performs roles together to stage a scene, to the washing of photographs and the preservation of albums after the Great East Japan Earthquake. He reads the family photograph as both a co-production and a device of memory.
Asada does not fix the family photograph as a natural record. What matters is that he extended photography into a site of social memory, encompassing the time spent making the picture, the work of keeping it, and the act of returning it to its owner.
This site does not display work images. Please see the official, museum, and publisher resources below.
Contents · Table of Contents
Born in 1979 in Mie Prefecture. His official profile shows a career in which, after graduating from the research course of the Nippon Photography Institute, he worked as a studio assistant before going independent*1.
He won the 34th Kimura Ihei Photography Award in 2009 for the photobook Asadake*1.
In 2020 the film The Asadas!, based on Asadake and The Power of the Album, was released*1.
Turning the family photograph into a co-production
In Asadake, the family plays roles such as firefighters, band members, and ramen-shop staff, turning the family photograph into a place where the picture is made together*2.
From taking to keeping
The Power of the Album deals with the activity of washing photographs and albums covered in mud after the Great East Japan Earthquake and returning them to their owners*5.
An exhibition for looking at someone else’s photographs
Someone’s Best Album at Art Tower Mito extends Asada’s activity from the personal family photograph toward the viewing and sharing of someone else’s album*3.
Asada can be situated as a contemporary Japanese photographer who connects staged photography, family photography, participatory photography, and the preservation of photographs after disaster*3.
His significance in photographic history lies in treating the family photograph not merely as a private record but as a node joining co-production, commemoration, social memory, and preservation work*5.