From Monika Mogi to Kenta Cobayashi, these bright young talents prove their country's rich history of innovative photography to be as vibrant as ever.

Japan is a hotbed of creativity, as anyone who follows&nbsp;Paris <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/categories/fashion-week">Fashion Week</a>, enjoys art history, or is a film junkie knows well. From Hokusai&#39;s&nbsp;The Great Wave&nbsp;to <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion-week/comme-des-garcons-spring-2019">Rei Kawakubo</a>&#39;s avant-garde creations and everything in between, the country&#39;s artistic <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/hiroko-koshino-whitebox-2018">talents</a> have an established record of innovation and display why Tokyo has become such a popular cultural center in many respects. <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/tags/photography">Photography</a> is no different, as the country has a rich and forward-thinking&nbsp;history with this field, and the brightest young talents continue to impress with work that mediates between beauty, commentary, and abstract narrative.&nbsp;L&rsquo;Officiel USA invited Dashwood Books&rsquo; manager, Miwa Susuda, to curate a portfolio of ten&nbsp;Japanese photographers to watch, each with practices that reflect Japan&rsquo;s ongoing reputation as a center of innovation in photography.

Okabe has made a name for herself with a body of work that straddles the worlds of fine art and <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/patrick-remy-antiglossy-rizzoli-2019">fashion</a>, having shot editorial stories for the likes of Garage&nbsp;and Libertin Dune. Her 2014 monograph, Dildo, was an explosion of sexually infused, colorfully hypnotic images, a Japanese take on Larry Clark&rsquo;s Tulsa&nbsp;that depicts the lives of two of Okabe&rsquo;s friends and lovers, known simply as Kaori and Yoko.&nbsp;Dildo&nbsp;announced Okabe as a bold new voice in Japanese photography, and since then, she has gone on to create works that push at and question notions of sexuality, a topic that remains very much taboo&nbsp;in Japan.

FROM THE SERIES &ldquo;DILDO,&rdquo; 2014

Momo Okabe

Quotidian, for Masaoka, is ample ground for&nbsp;experiencing the sublime. Following her graduation from art school in 2005, the artist took to motorcycling across Japan and exploring the country&rsquo;s many remote villages and communities. Masaoka&rsquo;s eye for the candid, often incongruous realities that arise from daily life&nbsp;results in images that are seemingly spontaneous manifestations of subtle celebration. A butcher&rsquo;s block with a severed head. A young woman walking in the snow, white flakes suspended mid-fall. The image of an eye on the <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/categories/film-tv">TV</a>. Each of Masaoka&rsquo;s images delight the viewer by evincing an uncanny world seemingly right in front of us.

FROM THE SERIES &ldquo;IN THE FLAP OF A BIRD&rsquo;S WING, WATER DRIES UP,&rdquo; 2016

Eriko Masaoka

Tokyo-born Okuyama exemplifies a new generation of Japanese photographers, and his presence is duly noted by his large following on Instagram. With several publications already to his name, including his 2019 monograph Los Angeles / San Francisco, Okuyama has been compared to the likes of <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/art/gucci-bookstore-2018">Ryan McGinley</a> and Stephen Shore. To be sure, his images depicting youthful adolescence in scenes typical of teenage life, combined&nbsp;with vividly colored snaps of everyday moments, call to mind the high-profile comparisons.

FROM THE SERIES &ldquo;A LIGHT UN LIGHT,&rdquo; 2018

Yoshiyuki Okuyama

With a career that has already included shooting campaigns for American Apparel and rocker <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/art/making-noise">Kim Gordon</a>&rsquo;s line of clothing, several exhibitions of her work, the publication of numerous zines, and profiles in the likes of <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/art/frieze-london-guide-2019">Frieze</a>&nbsp;magazine, Mogi has gained international recognition for her vivid, highly stylized photographs depicting Japanese youth culture. Switching back and forth between fashion editorials for the likes of Vogue Japan&nbsp;and her fine art career, the self-taught photographer has rapidly become one of the most high-profile and sought-after young creatives in Japan.

Monika Mogi

Yokota&#39;s work resists easy definition. The photographer&rsquo;s first publication, a 2012 zine entitled Back Yard, comprised images that the photographer repeatedly printed and re-photographed, sometimes repeating this process ten&nbsp;times. The resulting images are noted for their <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/beauty/platinum-hair-dye-crisis-solution-trend-2019">bleached</a> aesthetic and visible grain. The materiality of photographic reproduction is, for sure, apparent in Yokota&rsquo;s practice. And like in the works of Walead Beshty or Wolfgang Tillmans, it would seem that the opportunity to allow chance&nbsp;interruptions to occur in the process of creating a photographic print is, for Yokota, key to subverting its mechanical function.

UNTITLED, 2016

Daisuke Yokota

The Tokyo-based Cobayashi is known for works that utilize a variety of digital effects and computer software to distort and abstract his photographs. Beginning with an image&mdash;which may feature a landscape or portrait&mdash;Cobayashi &ldquo;tags&rdquo; his photographs, a process in which he alters the image in order to foreground what he views as the &ldquo;hand&rdquo; of the artist. Cobayashi cites everything from Buddhism to &rsquo;90s computer games as his artistic inspirations, finding in both elements of repetition, dissolution, and heightened notions of perception&mdash;all of which inform his approach to questioning and reconfiguring the image-making process in <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/leditorial-collaboration-in-the-digital-era-2019">the age of digital media</a>.

&nbsp;

ORANGE BLINDED #SMUDGE,&nbsp;2016

Kenta Cobayashi

Fumi Nagasaka 

Based in New York but born in Nagoya, Nagasaka&rsquo;s images reflect the photographer&rsquo;s dual fascination with both American and Japanese youth culture. Her most recent publication, Teenage Riot, published in 2018, follows a group of four young women from Canada, Japan, and the US, depicting her subjects in highly stylized, yet seemingly candid images. With her photographs appearing Stateside in publications like Dazed&nbsp;and T Magazine&mdash;not to mention shooting the <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/louis-vuitton-airpods-case-2019">Louis Vuitton</a> pre-Fall 2020 look book&mdash;Nagasaka&rsquo;s profile is decidedly on the rise.

Made In Japan: Ten Photographers To Watch

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