Manabu Miyazaki is a photographer who, since the early 1970s, has devised robotic cameras equipped with infrared sensors to photograph wild animals, lifting the veil of the forest that has concealed them. By using the penetrating vision of a hunter and cutting-edge equipment, he has made it possible for animals themselves to snap photographs.

Taiji Matsue has photographed the surfaces of the earth around the world—mountains, deserts, forests, cities—looking down from a great distance.
This exhibition comprises about fifty, primarily recent works, and will exhibit nine video works, the most ever screened in an exhibition.

During his lifetime as a photographer, Nobuyoshi Araki has remarkably produced more than 400 photography books. This oeuvre, unmatched anywhere in the world, is a manifestation of Araki’s belief that the photography book is the very core of a photographer’s activity…

NOGUCHI Rika is an internationally active photographer based in Berlin.
This exhibition covers the extent of her career, beginning with her early work, Record of Creation, which can be considered NOGUCHI’s launching point, previously unreleased work, as well as new work.

The image of Mt. Fuji, as seen by the Japanese, resembles an illusion that changes with the passing of time. Photographs of this mountain, that has been considered special since ancient days, are not so much landscape photographs as mirrors that reflect the mental scenery of modern Japanese. This exhibition is the first in a series, entitled, ‘Modern Japan as Seen through Mt. Fuji’, to be held at the Izu Photo Museum.

Yasuo Higa is not only one of the most renowned photographers in Okinawa, but he is also famous for his significant contribution to the field of ethnography.  After the B-52 crash at the Kadena Air Base in 1968, Higa resigned from his job as a policeman and decided to become a photographer. He is a photographer who symbolizes Okinawa in a turbulent era when events such as the Vietnam War and the “Restoration” to Japan stirred the region.
Shocked by a religious ritual in Miyako island which he encountered during his assignment work, Higa began to be intrigued by the old strata of Okinawa culture.  He eventually produced an enormous amount of documents about the Ryukyu Islands, including Kudaka Island, which has been called the “Island of Deities,” and other islands such as the Yaeyama Islands in the south and the Amami Islands in the north.  Until his death in 2000, Higa continued to search for the essence of spiritual culture in the Ryukyu Islands, by photographing rituals which were then becoming obsolete and the dignified women (the mothers) who conducted them.  Captured in his photographs is a kind of ritual of goddess worship and the maternal principle, which is unusual even from a global perspective, and some of the rituals are forbidden to man.  This exhibition presents 162 photographs from his photography book Hana tachi no kami (Maternal Deities) which Higa edited by himself but never published.  Many of the rituals, which were founded on nature and ancestor worship and conducted by each village, have already been transformed and some of them are now discontinued.  However, his photographs help to capture and preserve the fertile world of the deities of the Ryukyu Islands.

This exhibition is a touring version of Maternal Deities organized by the Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum, held from November 2, 2010 through January 10, 2011.

Yuki Kimura uses photographs and film in the context of contemporary art as materials, as well as analysis and thought concerning time and image, and has exhibited two- and three-dimensional works that expand into the exhibition space.
The subject exhibition of entirely new works is her first in a museum, and has been named “Untitled”. As in the title, by excluding stories and keywords, through the works alone Kimura attempts a more practical expression of her deliberation on the relationship between the image and its supporting medium or the photograph’s posteriority, which has matured slowly through her past work.
As expression utilizing photography takes on an increasingly significant role in contemporary art, we would like to present Yuki Kimura and the world of her works, which co

Guest curator: Geoffrey Batchen, photo historian

This exhibition is based on a collection of vernacular photographs assembled by photography historian Geoffrey Batchen. Mostly anonymous technicians and amateurs produced these photographs, which have been overlooked in conventional histories of photography. These photographs are either decorative images of everyday life or mementos of lost loved ones.

The IZU PHOTO MUSEUM is pleased to present HIROSHI SUGIMOTO: NATURE OF LIGHT as its inaugural exhibition opening in October 2009. Internationally renowned for his photographic works, Hiroshi Sugimoto has recently expanded his activities to include architectural projects. This exhibition features his new work and will be held in the first architectural space that the artist has also designed.