•  Festival: Kyotographie, an Eye at the Edge of the World
•  Festival: Daido Moriyama, Photography as Collision
•  Festival: Lucile Reyboz, Director of Kyotographie: “It’s Our Role, as Outsiders, to Push the Boundaries”
•  Festival: Ernest Cole, Photographer Without a Passport
•  Discovery: Ayaka Yamamoto’s Light Beneath the Skin
•  Fair: Gana Art: East Asian Photography at AIPAD
•  Archives: Kikuji Kawada: Cartographer of the Invisible

Kyotographie, an Eye at the Edge of the World

For its 14th edition, Kyoto’s international photography festival unfolds across a dozen historic venues in the imperial city. An event defined by artistic encounters, human warmth, and an acute awareness of the social stakes of our time.

By Jonas Cuénin

Daido Moriyama, Photography as Collision

At the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art, Kyotographie devotes an exceptional retrospective to the Japanese master. Conceived by Brazilian curator Thyago Nogueira after two and a half years of research, the exhibition chooses magazines and simple prints over framed vintages, books you can leaf through over display cases. A radical stance, entirely in keeping with the photographer himself.

By Jonas Cuénin

Lucile Reyboz, Director of Kyotographie: “It’s Our Role, as Outsiders, to Push the Boundaries”

Freshly decorated with the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the festival’s co-director spoke about the programming choices of this edition, the art of exhibiting politically sensitive subjects in Japan, and what the festival has changed for an entire generation of young Japanese photographers.

By Jonas Cuénin

Ernest Cole, Photographer Without a Passport

At the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art, Kyotographie presents the work of Ernest Cole in Japan for the first time — a Black South African photographer who risked his life to document apartheid from the inside. An exhibition conceived as an open book, and a broken destiny.

By Jonas Cuénin

Ayaka Yamamoto’s Light Beneath the Skin

Having presented her work at the portfolio reviews of Kyotographie, the international photography festival, Japanese photographer Ayaka Yamamoto has devoted her work since 2009 to the silent core that dwells within every being. A pursuit of rare coherence and beauty, whose furrow is traced by two books published in 2018 and 2021.

By Guénola Pellen

Kikuji Kawada: Cartographer of the Invisible

Last summer, at 92, Japanese photographer Kikuji Kawada returned to Arles with a dense and sensitive exhibition, presented at Vague. Entitled “Endless Map – Invisible,” it explored more than sixty years of creativity. A delicately orchestrated journey through the visible and its flaws.

By Jonas Cuénin