Wakaba Noda was born in 1984 in Fukuoka, Japan. She went to Sweden as an exchange student while in high school — “I saw very nice Astrid Lindgren movie when I was little and so I was always interested in Sweden”, says Noda — and since 2006 has been a photography student at Gothenburg University. After graduating from there this summer, Noda plans to return to Japan.

The above work is taken from Noda’s “Blink”, a series of diptychs. This series was given an honorable mention by famed critic Kotaro Iizawa at the 2006 Canon “New Cosmos of Photography” competition. About this work, Noda says that she “tried to make the physical body reaction (blink) into a photographic image. To blink is something that we can not really control. (Of course we can blink intentionally.) I wondered and visualized what I am missing in the little moment when I blink. So that is why I used two pictures to show a little difference and moment between there.”

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Haruto Hoshi was born in 1970 in Kanagawa prefecture. He graduated from the Contemporary Photography Research Institute in 2000. He has published his first book 街の火 (Luminance of the City) in 2007 and is represented by the Third District Gallery Tokyo. Please also see this extended gallery of his work.

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1. Haruto Hoshi Gallery Japan Expo
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Yasuhiro Ishimoto was born in 1921 in San Francisco, California, and grew up in Kochi on the island of Shikoku. In 1939 Ishimoto returned to the U.S., and was interned with other Japanese-Americans in Colorado from 1942-1944. He moved to Chicago in 1944 to study architecture at Northwestern University, and a couple of years later he transferred to the Institute of Design, the famed institution founded by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, where he studied under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. In 1961 Ishimoto returned to live in Japan for good. Ishimoto’s most famous body of work is Chicago, Chicago, published in 1969 and comprising work he shot in his adopted city from 1958 – 1961. His other published works include Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture (1960), Chicago, Chicago: Sono 2 (1980), and Shibuya, Shibuya (2007).

The above photo from 1951 is part of the current Japan: A Self Portrait exhibition, which looks at Japan from 1945 – 1964 through the eyes of 11 photographers, including Ishimoto, Ken Domon, Shomei Tomatsu, Eikoh Hosoe, and Shigeichi Nagano. The exhibition at the Setagaya Art Museum will run until June 21, after which it will travel within Japan before making its way to Europe. The exhibition was curated by Marc Feustel of Studio Equis — please see our interview with Feustel for more on the show and how it came to fruition.

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Masahiro Kodaira was born in 1972, and graduated from Tokyo Zokei University in 1997. Kodaira has been pursuing photography since 1994, with several solo and group exhibitions to his name. In addition to his own work, Kodaira has recently been involved in making new prints of the late, renowned avant-garde photographer Kiyoji Otsuji. Please also see our recent interview with Kodaira, as well as a gallery of his work.

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1. Masahiro Kodaira Gallery Japan Expo
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3. Norisada – From the series Hitori (One Person) Norisada

Kozo Miyoshi was born in Chiba Prefecture in 1947, and graduated from the Department of Photography of Nihon University in 1971. Over the last 30 years he has had numerous solo exhibitions both here in Japan and abroad. He has also photographed extensively abroad, most notably in the American Southwest, work that has been collected in the publications Far East and Southwest, published by the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona in 1994, and In the Road, which was published by Nazraeli Press in 1999. Miyoshi’s work is in the public collections of The National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, among others.

Miyoshi works almost exclusively with a large format 8 x 10 camera, as evidenced by the URL for his homepage, 8×10.jp. There you can can see samples from over 23 different series Miyoshi has worked on over the last 30 years. The above portrait comes from Miyoshi’s most recent series, “Shiogama Urato”, which features portraits of inhabitants of the Urato Islands, located off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture in northern Japan. More samples can be seen at Miyoshi’s homepage.

We currently have a special offer related to Kozo Miyoshi’s INDEX, a catalog bringing together over 35 years of Miyoshi’s work. This post has more details.

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1. Special Kozo Miyoshi Book Offer Japan Exp
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Image courtesy of Lumobox/Fujifilm (Switzerland) AG

Yukio Ohyama was born in 1952 in Kanagawa Prefecture. He is living in Fujisanroku and has been pursuing a career in photography there since 1990.

His works appeared in full-page color in a weekly magazine over a six-months period in 1999. Has documented the wildlife and seasons in the woodlands of the Susono area near Mt. Fuji over the last ten years and continues to pursue new avenues in photography. Ohyama is featured in the Fujifilm Web Gallery & Shop in Japan and Europe/Switzerland.

The Fujifilm Web Museum and Lumobox feature photographs by renowned photographers with a wide range of styles. Some photographs can also be purchased online at an affordable price. Lumobox also maintains a physical gallery in the centre of Zurich showcasing contemporary photography. Both websites are available in English, although we recommend visiting the Japanese version for the best multimedia experience and broadest selection of artists including Domon Ken, Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama and Kenzo Yamamoto (note that not all images are available for purchase).

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Norisada was born in 1980 in Saitama Prefecture. From an early age he was interested in drawing and continued this as a primary means of expression until entering Bunka Fashion College, where studied fashion and clothes design.

Five years ago he switched from fashion design to photography and began attending workshops from about three years ago. Most recently he exhibited his series Hitori in Gallery Place M in Shinjuku this January. According to Norisada, he is trying, through his photography, to get each viewer to confront their own self and arrive at a new understanding of themselves.

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1. Takayuki Igarashi – From the Series “Codes of Desire” Takayuki
2. Masahiro Kodaira – from Dr. Lorentz’s Butterfly series Masahiro
3. Kozo Miyoshi – from Shiogama Urato series Kozo Miyos

Nobuhiro Fukui was born in 1972 in Naruto City in Tokushima Prefecture. In 2004, he participated in a year-long workshop with photographer Osamu Kanemura. In addition to solo shows in Tokyo (2005) and Berlin (2006), Fukui showed work in two Tokyo Wonder Site group exhibitions (2007): Wonder Seeds 2007 and Tokyo Painting – My Little Everyday Sceneries. He currently lives and works in Tokyo.

The above image is taken from his series Juxtaposition and more from this series and his other work can be seen at Fukui’s website. He is represented by Tomio Koyama Gallery and on the gallery’s pages more information about his motivations and resulting photographs can be found. Of particular interest should be an interview with Nobuhiro Fukui on the Juxtaposition series.

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1. Takayuki Igarashi – From the Series “Codes of Desire” Takayuki
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3. Masahiro Kodaira – from Dr. Lorentz’s Butterfly series Masahiro

Since 1999 he has been an associate professor in the Department of Inter Media Art at the Tokyo National University of the Arts (known also as “Geidai”).

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2. Photography between actual and potential forms in Tokihiro Sato Tokihiro S
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Takayuki Igarashi was born in 1977 in Yamagata prefecture, and currently lives in Tokyo. He graduated from Tokyo University of Science in 2004 with a Mathematics degree. Last year, he graduated from the School of Photograph | Picture | Image, which is part of Waseda University’s Art and Architecture School. The above image shot in Tokyo’s Shinjuku area — more from this series can be seen at Igarashi’s website — comes from a Shintaro Sato-led large format workshop that Igarashi took at the school last year. (Sato was previously featured last November on Japan Exposures). An exhibition of work done in the workshop, which was focused on capturing Tokyo, will be exhibited at Roonee Gallery in Tokyo from January 13 – 18, 2009.

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