Eiko Yamazawa: What I Am Doing (New Edition)

The first female Japanese professional photographer, Eiko Yamazawa (1899–1995) opened a portrait studio in Osaka in 1931 after studying photography in California. Upon retiring from commercial photography in 1960, Yamazawa turned to experimental, conceptual expression in photography.

Largely overlooked by the mainstream narrative of Japanese photography, this book surveys Yamazawa's artistic career and contextualizes her work in relation to the American photography that influenced her. It opens with her self-reflective series "What I Am Doing" from the 1970s and '80s, in which she photographed her own equipment alongside prints of her earlier works. The book also features a full reproduction of her 1962 photobook Far and Near, as well as plates of the modern American photography she was exposed to, along with her early portraits and archival documents, accompanied by three essays written by Yamazawa between the 1920s and 1950s, and recent scholarship by Tsukasa Ikegami and Yoshiko Suzuki.

Year: 2026
224 pages
Size: H297mm x W210mm
ISBN: 978-4-86541-231-4