The Most Famous
PHOTOGRAPHERS from Japan
This page contains a list of the greatest Japanese Photographers. The pantheon dataset contains 148 Photographers, 3 of which were born in Japan. This makes Japan the birth place of the 7th most number of Photographers behind Czechia, and Austria.
Top 4
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Japanese Photographers of all time. This list of famous Japanese Photographers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Nobuyoshi Araki (b. 1940)
With an HPI of 59.81, Nobuyoshi Araki is the most famous Japanese Photographer. His biography has been translated into 24 different languages on wikipedia.
Nobuyoshi Araki (荒木 経惟, Araki Nobuyoshi, born May 25, 1940), professionally known by the mononym Arākii (アラーキー), is a Japanese photographer and contemporary artist. Known primarily for photography that blends eroticism and bondage in a fine art context, he has published over 500 books.
2. Daidō Moriyama (b. 1938)
With an HPI of 54.12, Daidō Moriyama is the 2nd most famous Japanese Photographer. His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.
Daidō Moriyama (Japanese: 森山 大道, Hepburn: Moriyama Daidō, born October 10, 1938) is a Japanese photographer best known for his black-and-white street photography and association with the avant-garde photography magazine Provoke. Moriyama began his career as an assistant to photographer Eikoh Hosoe, a co-founder of the avant-garde photo cooperative Vivo, and made his mark with his first photobook Japan: A Photo Theater, published in 1968. His formative work in the 1960s boldly captured the darker qualities of urban life in postwar Japan in rough, unfettered fashion, filtering the rawness of human experience through sharply tilted angles, grained textures, harsh contrast, and blurred movements through the photographer's wandering gaze. Many of his well-known works from the 1960s and 1970s are read through the lenses of post-war reconstruction and post-Occupation cultural upheaval. Moriyama continued to experiment with the representative possibilities offered by the camera in his 1969 Accident series, which was serialized over one year in the photo magazine Asahi Camera, in which he deployed his camera as a copying machine to reproduce existing media images. His 1972 photobook Farewell Photography, which was accompanied by an interview with his fellow Provoke photographer Takuma Nakahira, presents his radical effort to dismantle the medium. Although the photobook is a favored format of presentation among Japanese photographers, Moriyama was particularly prolific: he has produced more than 150 photobooks since 1968. His creative career has been honored by a number of solo exhibitions by major institutions, along with his two-person exhibition with William Klein at Tate Modern in 2012–13. He has received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the Hasselblad Award in 2019 and the International Center of Photography Infinity Award in 2012.
3. Kishin Shinoyama (1940 - 2024)
With an HPI of 52.79, Kishin Shinoyama is the 3rd most famous Japanese Photographer. His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.
Kishin Shinoyama (篠山 紀信, Shinoyama Kishin, December 3, 1940 – January 4, 2024) was a Japanese photographer. He is well-known for having photographed the covers for John Lennon and Yoko Ono's albums, Double Fantasy and Milk and Honey. Before his marriage to Saori Minami in 1979, he took a majority of the photographs for her album covers with CBS/Sony.
4. Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948)
With an HPI of 52.09, Hiroshi Sugimoto is the 4th most famous Japanese Photographer. His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.
Hiroshi Sugimoto (杉本博司, Sugimoto Hiroshi, born 23 February 1948) is a Japanese photographer and architect. He leads the Tokyo-based architectural firm New Material Research Laboratory.
People
Pantheon has 4 people classified as Japanese photographers born between 1938 and 1948. Of these 4, 3 (75.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Japanese photographers include Nobuyoshi Araki, Daidō Moriyama, and Hiroshi Sugimoto. The most famous deceased Japanese photographers include Kishin Shinoyama. As of April 2024, 1 new Japanese photographers have been added to Pantheon including Kishin Shinoyama.
Living Japanese Photographers
Go to all Rankings
Nobuyoshi Araki
1940 - Present
HPI: 59.81
Daidō Moriyama
1938 - Present
HPI: 54.12
Hiroshi Sugimoto
1948 - Present
HPI: 52.09
