Japan

Vintage: Japan Daily Life by Arnold Genthe (1908)

Vintage: Japan Daily Life by Arnold Genthe (1908)

Arnold Genthe was born in Berlin, Prussia, to Louise Zober and Hermann Genthe, a professor of Latin and Greek at the Graues Kloster (Grey Monastery) in Berlin. Genthe followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a classically trained scholar; he received a doctorate in philology in 1894 from the University of Jena, where he knew artist Adolf Menzel, his mother’s cousin.…
Vintage: Japan in the late XIX Century (Meiji period, 1870s-1880s)

Vintage: Japan in the late XIX Century (Meiji period, 1870s-1880s)

In 1869 The Emperor was restored to nominal supreme power, and the imperial family moved to Edo, which was renamed Tokyo (“eastern capital”). However, the most powerful men in the government were former samurai from Chōshū and Satsuma rather than the Emperor, who was fifteen in 1868. These men, known as the Meiji oligarchs, oversaw the dramatic changes Japan would…
Biography: Nude photographer Iwase Yoshiyuki

Biography: Nude photographer Iwase Yoshiyuki

Iwase Yoshiyuki was born in Onjuku (1904 – 2001) a fishing village on the pacific side of the Chiba peninsula, which encloses Tokyo Bay on the east. After graduating from Meiji University Law School in 1924, he took up lifelong pursuits, heading the family sake distillery and documenting the receding traditions of coastal Japan. In the late 1920’s Yoshiyuki received…
Interview with Black and White photographer Osamu Jinguji

Interview with Black and White photographer Osamu Jinguji

I’m a photo artist and a creator in Japan. My career by them has re-started since my first poetry-photo book has been published in 2009. After that, I’ve been ever participating in many group exhibitions, art fairs in New York (SCOPE), in Miami (SPECTRUM), in Spain (ARTEANDO) and in Germany (BERLINER LISTE), etc. Also, my works, for the last several…
Interview with Alternative Process photographer Miho Kajioka

Interview with Alternative Process photographer Miho Kajioka

I was born in 1973 in Okayama, Japan, and at 18 moved to California, where I studied at the San Francisco Art Institute. I began there as a painting major, but little by little turned to photography. I finished by fine arts degree at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. Upon graduation, I returned to Japan and became a journalist, producing TV…
Biography: Ken Domon

Biography: Ken Domon

Ken Domon (25 October 1909 – 15 September 1990) is one of the most renowned Japanese photographers of the 20th century. He is most celebrated as a photojournalist, though he may have been most prolific as a photographer of Buddhist temples and statuary. After WW2 Domon started with documenting the aftermath of the war, focusing on society and the lives…