Zen Foto Gallery is pleased to announce “Get Out Into Streets!”, an exhibition of black and white street photography by 8 photographers from June 1st to 25th. Due to the spread of the new coronavirus infection from last year, our living environment has changed completely and we are still pressured to refrain from going out to prevent the spread of the virus. However, the inconvenience and limitations during the pandemic also made us realize how we had unknowingly enjoyed our direct contact with the outside world. As the state of emergency has been lifted in Tokyo and we have begun to gradually resume our normal activities, we can see how human beings are instinctively seeking the feeling of actual experience. We may say that it is fundamentally connected to the behaviour of photographers who go on the streets and capture images of the real world, producing what we call “snapshots”. This time, we have re-examined the existing works from this current point of view and selected a group of snapshot photographs for this exhibition. It is our greatest wish for this exhibition to provide empowerment for both the viewer and the exhibitor.

*Please note that the exhibition is divided into two parts:

Vol 1 (6/1-6/11)
Issei Suda “Mechanical Retina on My Fingertips”
Chotoku Tanaka “Panoramic Photography Europe 1975”
Shinya Arimoto “Tokyo Circulation”
John Sypal “Zuisha”

Vol 2 (6/15-25)
Hiromi Tsuchida “Autistic Space”
Tamiko Nishimura “My Journey, continued”
Takehiko Nakafuji “White Noise”
Naohiro Harada “Drifting”

Artist Profile

Issei SUDA

Born in Tokyo in 1940. From 1967 to 1970 he worked as the cameraman of the theatrical group Tenjo Sajiki, under Shuji Terayama. He won the 16th Domon Ken Award by his work “Human Memory(人間の記憶)”. His main works are “Fushi kaden”, “Waga-Tokyo 100”, “Ningen no kioku”, “Min'yo sanga” etc..

Chotoku Tanaka

Born in Tokyo, 1947, Tanaka graduated from Nihon University College of Art, specializing in photography. While he was still in school, he had already been publishing his works in magazines and exhibiting at galleries, and after graduating he stayed in Vienna, New York and Prague to work as a photographer. Tanaka has a reputation for his deep knowledge of cameras and photography — he is still writing for many specialized magazines and his own web magazine “Chotoku’s Camera Notes”. His main publications include “Vienna, New York, Niigata” (1991, Broadcasting System of Niigata), “Wien Monochrome 70’s” (2005, Tokyo Kirara), “Panoramic Photography Europe 1975” (2020, Zen Foto Gallery) and many more.

Shinya ARIMOTO

Born in Osaka, 1971, Arimoto currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. Graduated from Visual Arts Osaka in 1994, Arimoto received the 35th Taiyo Award in 1998 with his work “Portrait of Tibet”. In 2008, he founded the Totem Pole Photo Gallery. Arimoto published “Tokyo Circulation” with Zen Foto Gallery in 2016 and won the 26th Tadahiko Hayashi Award as well as the Photographic Society of Japan’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017. His other publications include “ariphoto selection” (No. 1-10, Totem Pole Photo Gallery) and “TIBET” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2019). Actively presenting his work in and out of Japan, he held a solo show at Le Plac'Art Photo, Paris in 2017 and participated in the group exhibition “Am Rand der Gesellschaft. Barlach – Springer – Arimoto” at Museum Bautzen, Germany in 2019.

John SYPAL

Born in Nebraska, USA in 1979. After graduating from the University of Nebraska he moved to Japan in 2004 and began exhibiting his photography in 2005. His main exhibitions include “Nebraska, The Good Life” (Nikon Salon, 2005), “The Difference Between” (Konica Minolta Plaza, 2007), “Gaijin Like Me” (Nikon Salon, 2008), “195” (Kaido Ribbon, 2010), “John Sypal Photographs” (Yokohama Sogo Leica Shop, 2015), and “An Endless Attraction” (Leica Tokyo, 2022). In 2010 he joined Totem Pole Photo Gallery, where he has been exhibiting his ongoing Zuisha series since 2012. From 2008 he began Tokyo Camera Style, through which he shares Japanese photographic culture online. The ongoing project was compiled and published as a photobook by Thames & Hudson in 2015.

Hiromi TSUCHIDA

Born in Fukui Prefecture, 1939, Tsuchida entered Pola Cosmetics, Inc., after graduating from the Faculty of Engineering, University of Fukui in 1963. While working at Pola, he began studying photography night time at the Tokyo College of Photography. After he left his company in 1971 to become a freelance photographer, his debut work “Autistic Space” captured in Asakusa received the 8th Taiyo Award and was exhibited at Ginza Nikon Salon. He had then released many other works and became a prominent photographer in Japan. Tsuchida received the Nobuo Ina Award in 1978 with “Hiroshima 1945~1979” and Award of the Year from the Photographic Society of Japan with “Hiroshima” in 1984. In 2008, he has received the Ken Domon Award with “Hiromi Tsuchida’s Japan”.

Tamiko NISHIMURA

Born in 1948 in Tokyo, Nishimura graduated from Tokyo Photography College (current Tokyo Visual Arts) in 1969. Her graduation work was a photography series of Jōkyō Gekijo (Situation Theatre), forefront of the underground theatre movement led by Jūrō Kara. After her graduation, she met Daido Moriyama, Kōji Taki and Takuma Nakahira, three highly influential members of the Provoke movement. She assisted them in the darkroom from time to time up between 1969 and 1970, while she continued her personal shooting on her travels. Later in 1973, Nishimura made her debut through the first publication “Shikishima” published by Tokyo Photography College, showcasing her photographs taken from 1969 to 1972 on her journeys around Japan including Hokkaidō, Tōhoku, Hokuriku, Kantō, Kansai and Chūgoku regions. She also began to travel to Southeastern Asia and Europe in the 1980s. Nishimura’s language of expression is poetic, spiritual and deeply personal. Looking back on her career, Nishimura describes it as a sequence of journeys, and she continued photographing with her nomadic lifestyle. Her photography, revealing what is beyond a journey, is a manifold portrait of life wherever she encounters.

Her main publications are “Shikishima” (Tokyo Photography College, 1973. Reprinted by Zen Foto Gallery in 2014), “vent calmoso” (Sokyu-sha, 2005), “Existence 1968-69” (graficamag, 2011), “Eternal Chase” (graficamag, 2012), “Kittenish...” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2015), “My Journey” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2018) and “Voyage” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2019), “My Journey II. 1968–1989“ (Zen Foto Gallery, 2019), and “My Journey III. 1993-2022“ (Zen Foto Gallery, 2022). Her works are included in the collection of M+ museum (Hong Kong).

Takehiko NAKAFUJI

Born in 1970, Tokyo, Takehiko Nakafuji dropped out from Waseda University, School of Humanities and Social Sciences and graduated from the Photography Department of Tokyo Visual Arts College. He continues to publish his works of street photography, mainly in monochrome, and travels in and out of Japan for photo coverage jobs, including countries in Eastern Europe, Russia and Cuba. While Nakafuji is active as a photographer, he is also the owner of Gallery Niepce in Yotsuya, Tokyo. He has won the 29th Higashikawa Special Photographer Award for his series ‘Sakuan Matapaan - Hokkaido’ in 2013, and the 24th Hayashi Tadahiko Award for his series ‘STREET RAMBLER’ in 2015. His works are included in the collection of Kiyosato Photo Art Museum, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum and Shunan City Museum of Art and History.

Naohiro HARADA

Born in 1982 in Tokyo, Harada graduated from the Art and Architecture School of Waseda University in 2010. He held his first solo exhibition “Drifting” at Nikon Salon in Shinjuku and Osaka in 2011, and participated in “Group Exhibition vol.2 HAKKA” at BankART Studio NYK, Yokohama in 2014, and in the same year held his solo exhibition “Drifting” at Zen Foto Gallery. A photobook of the work was also published by Zen Foto Gallery under the same title. In 2016, he had a joint exhibition with Andile Buka at Totodo, Tokyo titled “Remixing Ground”. After publishing a photobook of his colour work “The Third Room” in 2018 with Zen Foto Gallery, exhibitions of the work were held at the gallery and Umeda Tsutaya Books. His work “Tokyo Fishgraphs | 2020”, created during the coronavirus pandemic, received the Libraryman Award in 2022 and a book was published by Libraryman under the same title. Harada is currently based in Tokyo.

Publications & Prints