2010.26th（pdf）

The 26th Higashikawa Award Winners
<The Overseas Photographer Award>
Chin-pao CHEN (Taiwan)
For his accomplishments as a photographer
<The Domestic Photographer Award>
Keizo KITAJIMA
For his works such as the publication of THE JOY OF PORTRAITS （Hysteric Glamour, RAT
HOLE BOOKS, 2009）, Keizo Kitajima 1975-1991 exhibition (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of
Photography, 2009) and his accomplishments as a photographer.
<The New Photographer Award>
Osamu James NAKAGAWA
For his works such as BANTA: Osamu James Nakagawa Exhibition (Sakima Art Museum,
2009) and BANTA: Stained Memory exhibition (Ginza Nikon Salon, 2010).
<The Special Photographer Award>
Yoshihiro HAGIWARA
For his works such as the publication of SNOWY (Tosei-sha, 2008) and Yubari, Specific Point
Observation.
<The Hidano Kazuemon Award>
Ichiro KOJIMA
For his works as a photographer based in Aomori.
The Overseas Photographer Award
Chin - pao CHEN Lives in Taipei, Taiwan
老松計劃 之六 / LauSong Project, #06 2009
Born in 1969 in the Matsu Islands, Taiwan near Fujian Province of the Republic of China. Graduated from the
Department of Photography of the School of Visual Arts, New York in 1999. Won the New Photographer Award at
the Taipei Photofest, for the series of A moment of beauty: a collection of images of betel nut girls starting in
1996. This is a series of documentary portraiture capturing the scenes of young women selling betel nuts to the
drivers and passers-by from a small glass stand on the road in provocative clothing. This betel nuts selling is a
cultural phenomenon generating controversy and creating trends. Displayed in a group exhibition in le Point
Ephémère, Paris, France and chosen as a Special Selection for the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.
Started a project called Circumgyration in 2001 in which he represents an image of people s memory making the
most of his career as an elementary school teacher. Tried to unite documentary and staged-photo searching for
the ambiguous boundary that swings between reality and memories; infusing performance with truth.
In the series of Heaven on Earth , he took photographs of the burial sites and shrines which neighbor ordinary
residential community, capturing the typical Taiwanese social landscape in which the living and the deceased
coexist.
Participated in Daegu Photo Biennale, Korea in 2008. Won a Taipei Arts Awards in 2009. From the early stage of
his live, he has been inquisitive about the art in photography and now works actively as a representative middle-age
Taiwanese photographer.
The Domestic Photographer Award
PLACES 2009
Keizo KITAJIMA Lives in Tokyo
Born in Nagano in 1954. Left the Law Faculty of Seikei University early in 1975. Participated in a class instructed
by Daido Moriyama, at the WORKSHOP Photography School and for the first time visited Koza, Okinawa, navy base.
Established a gallery, CAMP, in 1976 along with the members of Moriyama Workshop. Organized a continuous
exhibition, Photography Tokkyubin, there in an innovated manner, and in doing so, received the Newcomer s
Award of the Photographer s Society of Japan in 1981. Received the Kimura Ihei Award for the photography
book New York in 1983. He has earned a high reputation for his ability to capture exquisite images quickly
without looking into the view finder and effectively using camera flash.
From Okinawa, he traveled through America and then onto the 15 republics of the Soviet Union just prior to the fall
of the curtain in 1991. He created the portraits using color film face to face with the subjects using a background
that shows where they belong such as occupations. After 16 years, he released USSR 1991, which won him the Ina
Nobuo Award.
Since 1992, he has utilized a new methodology using a large-scale camera and present his next series PORTRAITS
and PLACES. He explores the existence of the photography as an archive.
He founded Photographers Gallery with the other photographers in 2001, where he organizes various activities
such as magazine publications, lectures and slide shows.
The New Photographer Award
From the Gama series
Osamu James NAKAGAWA Lives in Bloomington, Indiana, United States
Born in New York in 1962. Lived in Tokyo until he was 15. Received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of
Houston.
He takes photographs using a motif of memories, history and families in corporating his duality and conflicts of
coming from two different cultural backgrounds; the Orient and the Occident.
In his early series Mado (1988-2000), he shows his works implying the relations of his self and others meditatively
utilizing the landscapes through windows decorated with droplets of water.
In the Kai-following the cycle of life series (1998-2001), he explores the way to visualize and memorialize life and
death, family bonds and history on the basis of his experiences with his father s death and his daughter s birth.
In From the Banta series (2005-08), he creates works with staggering perspective and bizarre reality digital
combining photographs of Okinawa. In his works he uses the cliffs of his wife s home, Okinawa, where a mass
suicide occurred during the Second World War.
In Gama series (2008- ), he took photographs of the caves bound in dark using artificial lights with high-definition
cameras for a long time. His both series, which tempt us to have a specially visualized experience, remind us of the
past in a new dimension by using digital photography.
Currently, he is an associate professor at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana and is a recipient of the 2009
John Simon Guggenheim fellowship.
The Special Award
Teine Mine, Sapporo City 2000
Yoshihiro HAGIWARA Lives in Tokyo
Born in Takasaki city, Gunma Prefecture in 1961. Graduated from the Nihon University College of Art, Department of
Photography in 1985. Received Sagamihara Photo Festival New Comer Award in 2001. He became a freelance
photographer after working for the publishing and photography section of Mainichi Shimbun in 2007. Over 30 years,
he continues to visit Yubari and keeps the records of the mines and searches the means to express the memories.
Visited Yubari, in which the aftereffect of the gas accident in 1982 still remains. He continues shooting going back
and forth between Tokyo and Yubari. Over the course of the accident and the mine closing, he became interested in
journalism and started working for the photography section of the Mainichi. Aside from his works, he continues to
document Yubari and the closing coalmines and mines all over Japan.
Pays attentions to and focuses on seeing the scenes with his own eyes despite journalism abandoning it. He formats
his works in 6 6 frames which has a strong aesthetical impact. His works show the spirit of the people that lived
there which distinguish them from ordinary pictures of ruins.
Published Remnants of Prosperity・Forgotten Japanese mines (Mado-sha) in 2004, with the photographs of
the closed mines and remains. Published SNOWY (TOSEI-SHA) in 2008, which captures the everchanging natural
form of snow and the traces of the mine people who equally embraced and resisted it. In the exhibition Mines as
cultural resources
held in Meguro Museum of Art, Tokyo in 2009, he showed his Yubari, Specific Point
Observation in which he took photographs at the same places he took in 1983.
The Hidano Kazuemon Award
Simokitagun Omamachi 1961
Ichiro KOJIMA Born in Aomori (1924-64)
Born as the eldest son in Omachi (now Motomachi), Aomori City in 1924. His family ran the oldest photography
related business in the prefecture. In 1954 he started taking photographs in earnest by becoming a member of
Hokuyokai, a photography group, his father, a pioneer of the Aomori photography world, initiated. He pursed formative
beauty, which was different from realism photography propelled by Domon Ken. Finding Tsugaru as a subject, he
created works which have captured Tsugaru s rich nature and people living there with affection.
Ackowledged by the photo-journalist forerunner, Natori Yonosuke, he held his first solo exhibition Tsugaru in
Konishiroku Gallery in Tokyo in 1958. He went to Tokyo and became a freelance photographer. He received a
Camera-Geijutu New Comer Award for The Rough Seas of Shimokita . He continuously took photographs of Tsugaru
and Shimokita. He attracted attention as a new photographer with Aomori as a main subject.
He showed his original world view capturing the rich monotone harmony of heavenly sunlight coming from the clouds,
the sceneries with blusterous snow, and desolate landscapes. His works are distinguishable from the typical
commercial photography of Aomori and express his worldviews.
In 1963, [Tsugaru ‒ poems, literature and photography] (Literature by Ishizaka Yojiro and Poems by Takagi Kyozo) was
published by Shinchosha. He fell ill taking photographs in the cold winter months in Hokkaido. He went back to
Aomori-city to be with his wife and children and tried to recover. Despite this, he died at the age of 39 in 1964. In mid
1980, he was reevaluated and his first complete photography book hysteric Eleven Kojima Ichiro
(hysteric glamour)
was published in 2004. In 2008, a retrospective photography exhibition was held in his hometown, Aomori showcasing
his lifeworks. With a catchphrase Postwar Aomori s Photographic Millet , this exhibition attracted a wide span of
attention and his works came to be known to the world.