Made In Japan: Ten Photographers To Watch
From Monika Mogi to Kenta Cobayashi, these bright young talents prove their country's rich history of innovative photography to be as vibrant as ever.
Japan is a hotbed of creativity, as anyone who follows Paris Fashion Week, enjoys art history, or is a film junkie knows well. From Hokusai's The Great Wave to Rei Kawakubo's avant-garde creations and everything in between, the country's artistic talents have an established record of innovation and display why Tokyo has become such a popular cultural center in many respects. Photography is no different, as the country has a rich and forward-thinking history with this field, and the brightest young talents continue to impress with work that mediates between beauty, commentary, and abstract narrative. L’Officiel USA invited Dashwood Books’ manager, Miwa Susuda, to curate a portfolio of ten Japanese photographers to watch, each with practices that reflect Japan’s ongoing reputation as a center of innovation in photography.
Okabe has made a name for herself with a body of work that straddles the worlds of fine art and fashion, having shot editorial stories for the likes of Garage and Libertin Dune. Her 2014 monograph, Dildo, was an explosion of sexually infused, colorfully hypnotic images, a Japanese take on Larry Clark’s Tulsa that depicts the lives of two of Okabe’s friends and lovers, known simply as Kaori and Yoko. Dildo announced Okabe as a bold new voice in Japanese photography, and since then, she has gone on to create works that push at and question notions of sexuality, a topic that remains very much taboo in Japan.
FROM THE SERIES “DILDO,” 2014
Quotidian, for Masaoka, is ample ground for experiencing the sublime. Following her graduation from art school in 2005, the artist took to motorcycling across Japan and exploring the country’s many remote villages and communities. Masaoka’s eye for the candid, often incongruous realities that arise from daily life results in images that are seemingly spontaneous manifestations of subtle celebration. A butcher’s block with a severed head. A young woman walking in the snow, white flakes suspended mid-fall. The image of an eye on the TV. Each of Masaoka’s images delight the viewer by evincing an uncanny world seemingly right in front of us.
FROM THE SERIES “IN THE FLAP OF A BIRD’S WING, WATER DRIES UP,” 2016
Tokyo-born Okuyama exemplifies a new generation of Japanese photographers, and his presence is duly noted by his large following on Instagram. With several publications already to his name, including his 2019 monograph Los Angeles / San Francisco, Okuyama has been compared to the likes of Ryan McGinley and Stephen Shore. To be sure, his images depicting youthful adolescence in scenes typical of teenage life, combined with vividly colored snaps of everyday moments, call to mind the high-profile comparisons.
FROM THE SERIES “A LIGHT UN LIGHT,” 2018
With a career that has already included shooting campaigns for American Apparel and rocker Kim Gordon’s line of clothing, several exhibitions of her work, the publication of numerous zines, and profiles in the likes of Frieze magazine, Mogi has gained international recognition for her vivid, highly stylized photographs depicting Japanese youth culture. Switching back and forth between fashion editorials for the likes of Vogue Japan and her fine art career, the self-taught photographer has rapidly become one of the most high-profile and sought-after young creatives in Japan.
Yokota's work resists easy definition. The photographer’s first publication, a 2012 zine entitled Back Yard, comprised images that the photographer repeatedly printed and re-photographed, sometimes repeating this process ten times. The resulting images are noted for their bleached aesthetic and visible grain. The materiality of photographic reproduction is, for sure, apparent in Yokota’s practice. And like in the works of Walead Beshty or Wolfgang Tillmans, it would seem that the opportunity to allow chance interruptions to occur in the process of creating a photographic print is, for Yokota, key to subverting its mechanical function.
UNTITLED, 2016
The Tokyo-based Cobayashi is known for works that utilize a variety of digital effects and computer software to distort and abstract his photographs. Beginning with an image—which may feature a landscape or portrait—Cobayashi “tags” his photographs, a process in which he alters the image in order to foreground what he views as the “hand” of the artist. Cobayashi cites everything from Buddhism to ’90s computer games as his artistic inspirations, finding in both elements of repetition, dissolution, and heightened notions of perception—all of which inform his approach to questioning and reconfiguring the image-making process in the age of digital media.
ORANGE BLINDED #SMUDGE, 2016
Fumi Nagasaka
Based in New York but born in Nagoya, Nagasaka’s images reflect the photographer’s dual fascination with both American and Japanese youth culture. Her most recent publication, Teenage Riot, published in 2018, follows a group of four young women from Canada, Japan, and the US, depicting her subjects in highly stylized, yet seemingly candid images. With her photographs appearing Stateside in publications like Dazed and T Magazine—not to mention shooting the Louis Vuitton pre-Fall 2020 look book—Nagasaka’s profile is decidedly on the rise.
