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  ©Kozo Miyoshi

Kozo Miyoshi is one of the representative contemporary photographers of Japan. He began to take photographs of views fascinating to him with an 8×10-inch camera in 1981, and has made series of works more than quarter century. The work captured children standing in the view of every region of Japan: “Innocents” (1985), captured ordinary yet fascinating views to him in Japan: “Picture Show” (1987), and captured greenhouses in Japan: “Conservatory” in 1989, etc., there are masterpieces remain in viewer’s heart. He continues to make several photography travels in Japan and pursues his own photography with an 8×10-inch camera. Those impressive works such as “Sakura” (2003), “Seagirt” (2004), “Tokyo Drive” (2006) and “Somewhere, Sometime” (2007) are well known.

Miyoshi began to photograph Sakura (cherry blossom) from 1998. Every spring, traveling toward north with the “cherry blossom front”, he meets Sakura and photographs what he likes. There is a Sakura charms many people, and there is a Sakura nestled in landscape. Miyoshi, who continues to photograph Sakura as sight in the spring, becomes to photograph Sakura itself, and faces Sakura again. “The feeling and condition when I see Sakura waking up in the morning beneath blossoms of Sakura is important to me, and I am photographing Sakura facing that feeling and condition,” he says.

Miyoshi has photographed many years with the same spirit and attitude. “I think photograph is that, by film and lens, and printing on photographic paper in the darkroom, those are tightly-bound, the whole thing is photograph. It is important to me to continue those things,” he says. Once he decides subject to photograph, he travels many places to photograph, and makes photographic prints. He makes rules to himself and continues “photograph” steadily with the same spirit and attitude as if he is a monk.
The 30 gelatin silver prints (print size: 20×24 inches) including photographs after 2003 by 8×10 inches large-format camera and the most recent photographs by 16×20 inches super large-format camera as well are shown.

Kozo Miyoshi
Born in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, 1947. Graduated from the Department of Photography, Nihon University, 1971. Stayed in Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A., 1991- 1996. Living in Tokyo at present.
Selected recent one-person exhibitions: “Somewhere, Sometime” Photo Gallery International.

Exhibitions at PGI