Collection: Shotaro Akiyama

Shotaro Akiyama (1920–2003) was a Japanese photographer whose career spanned portrait, celebrity, gravure and flower photography across the postwar decades. He rose to prominence through studio portraits of Japanese actresses — beginning with Setsuko Hara — before his practice extended across cinema, television, literature, politics and sport. Following European travels in 1960, flowers became an increasingly dominant subject, representing a sustained shift from the human subject toward colour, form and natural light. Akiyama’s work appeared widely in Japan’s leading illustrated magazines and photography publications throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.