Inspired by a book of panoramic photographs of European cities, Japanese artist Takeshi Takeda decided to fulfill a long-term ambition to photograph his hometown of Kyoto using a Russian Horizont panoramic camera. Beginning in the winter of 2022, when the otherwise bustling Kyoto was still being transformed into a different, more solemn space by the corona pandemic, Takeda photographed for ten days in each of the following seasons, covering Kyoto in winter, spring, summer, and fall. His photo book "Kyoto Panorama" presents a selection of one hundred of his works.

“I wondered if ancient ideas such as feng shui can still be applied in our modern, scientifically oriented society. But I think I found a visual answer to this interesting question when I walked around Kyoto for the first time in more than twenty years. The qi of the earth permeates every corner of the city, inspiring the sense of the people, and natre and humankind work together to create and nurture Kyoto in new ways every day.”
― from Takeshi Takeda’s afterword “Kyoto in Panorama”

-Book Size
125 × 250 mm
-Pages
120 pages, 100 images
-Binding
Softcover
-Publication Year
2025
-Language
English, Japanese
-Limited Edition
500
-ISBN
978-4-910244-42-6

Artist Profile

Takeshi TAKEDA

Born in Kyoto in 1974, Takeshi Takeda graduated from the School of Theology at Doshisha University. During his studies, he took a year off to travel around the Australian continent with a single-lens reflex camera. After returning to Japan, he studied photography with Takao Inoue. In 1997, he participated in the Japan-China joint research project “The Search for the Yangtze River Civilization” as a documentary photographer, covering various parts of China over five years. In 2001, Takeda became an independent freelance photographer, continuing his travels in China and Asia in search of the roots of Japanese spiritual culture. He received the Konica Minolta Foto Premio Grand Prize in 2010 and the Kyoto Prefecture Culture Award Encouragement Prize in 2014. His publications include 6,300 Kilometers on the Yangtze (Tosei-sha, 2021), Memoirs of the Peach Blossom Land: Ten Years with the People of Basha Village in China (Shinchosha, 2015), Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse [Japanese Edition with Photographs] (Shinchosha, 2013), Journey Along the Ancient Tea Horse Road (Tankosha, 2010), and Chang Jiang (Mitsumura Suiko Shoin, 2005).

Gallery Exhibitions