Hiroh Kikai (鬼海 弘雄, Kikai Hiroo; 18 March 1945 – 19 October 2020) was a Japanese photographer best known within Japan…
Hiroh Kikai (鬼海 弘雄, Kikai Hiroo; 18 March 1945 – 19 October 2020) was a Japanese photographer best known within Japan for four series of monochrome photographs: scenes of buildings in and close to Tokyo, portraits of people in the Asakusa area of Tokyo, and rural and town life in India and Turkey. He pursued each of these for over two decades, and each led to one or more book-length collections. Although previously a respected name in Japanese photography, Kikai was not widely known until 2004, when the first edition of his book Persona, a collection of Asakusa portraits, won both the Domon Ken Award and Annual Award of the PSJ. In 2009, the ICP and Steidl copublished Asakusa Portraits for an international market.
Famous People from Yamagata Prefecture
Yamagata Prefecture: 4 people
Eikoh Hosoe (細江 英公, Hosoe Eikō; 18 March 1933 – 16 September 2024) was a Japanese photographer and filmmaker who…
Eikoh Hosoe (細江 英公, Hosoe Eikō; 18 March 1933 – 16 September 2024) was a Japanese photographer and filmmaker who emerged in the experimental arts movement of post-World War II Japan. Hosoe is best known for his dark, high contrast, black and white photographs of human bodies. His images are often psychologically charged, exploring subjects such as death, erotic obsession, and irrationality. Some of his photographs reference religion, philosophy and mythology, while others are nearly abstract, such as Man and Woman # 24, from 1960. He was professionally and personally affiliated with the writer Yukio Mishima and experimental artists of the 1960s such as the dancer Tatsumi Hijikata, though his work extends to a diversity of subjects. His photography is not only notable for its artistic influence but for its wider contribution to the reputations of his subjects.
Yūkichi Watabe (渡部 雄吉, Watabe Yūkichi; 1924–1993) was a Japanese photographer.
Ken Domon (土門 拳, Domon Ken; 25 October 1909 – 15 September 1990) was a celebrated Japanese photographer known for his…
Ken Domon (土門 拳, Domon Ken; 25 October 1909 – 15 September 1990) was a celebrated Japanese photographer known for his work as a photojournalist and as a photographer of Buddhist temples and statuary. Domon, who began his career in the 1930s contributing photo reportages to magazines that supported the increasingly militaristic Japanese state and its imperial policies, later criticized propaganda photography. His subsequent termination from the government agency he worked for spurred his career as a freelance photographer. As photojournalists grappled with how to depict the new social reality of the post-WWII period, Domon forged the realistic photography movement (Riarizumu Shashin Undō). He embraced the idea of snapshot photography (sunappu), in which images could be captured with "absolute unstagedness". Domon documented the aftermath of the war, focusing on society and the lives of ordinary people. He received national acclaim for his portraits of children in exploitative labor conditions and Hiroshima bomb survivors (hibakusha). Domon was forced to abandon sunappu photography after he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1958. His major project until the end of his career was photographing temples across Japan, a much-beloved subject that he had first begun to document in 1940. These images constituted the monumental series Pilgrimage to Ancient Temples (Koji Junrei), published in five volumes from 1963 to 1975.