Turbulence in Kyoto 43, 2022

Yasuo Kiyonaga   New & remarkable Artists

A photographer based in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Paris. 

Born in 1948 in Kagawa, Japan. 

In his photographic work, Yasuo Kiyonaga interprets nature, villages, cities, people, and everything else in our lives in surrealistic ways. The subjects captured in his viewfinder are freed from their original contexts and given new shapes and significances.

Many of his works are associated with the abstract arts of cubism and surrealism. 

His output is not limited to photography. Using his unique skills, he beautifully combines seemingly incompatible concepts such as photographs and paintings, nature and the artificial, two-dimensional and three-dimensional, past and future, and dreams and reality, and sublimates them into art.

In 1966, strongly influenced by the two photographers Jean-Eugène Atget and Aaron Siskind, Yasuo Kiyonaga began studying photography. In 1970, after graduating from a college photography program, he started working for Recruit Co., Ltd. as a staff photographer, who mainly photograph the workers in Japan. In 1980, he left the organization and established his own company, SHC, which specializes in the planning and production of corporate communication content which was not well known at the time.

Yasuo Kiyonaga focused on the field of photojournalism for a long term and grew SHC into a company with 150 employees. Even today, this company remains an industry leader. In addition to its core business, it is also boldly taking on new challenges that are ahead of the times. The ideas, critical eye, and decision-making skills honed through these experiences have become the source of his creative activities.

In 1995, he resumed his career as an artist and opened a series of galleries in Tokyo, Kyoto, Paris, and online to display his works and those of other  photographers. He is the owner of the online photo galleries Kyoto Museum of Photography, as well as the physical galleries Kyoto Museum of Photography,  Gallery Artisan Tokyo and Gallery Japanesque Paris.

His works have been exhibited across Japan, including Spirit of Forest at Epson Imaging Gallery Epsite (2010), Hanoi × 6% at Kintetsu Department Store Abeno Harukas Art Gallery (2020), and Identity and Two Landscapes at Kyoto Museum of Photography Gallery Japanesque (2020). 

Yasuo Kiyonaga has published several books, including Leslie (1999), Spirit of Forest (2007), Paris Sketch (2012), the Japanese Beautiful Landscapes series (from 2008), Japanese Tools (2015), and Ujo (Senses of Rain) (2016). 

As part of his lifework, he has photographed ancient capitals, rural villages in Japan and other countries and compiled his pictures into books.

He is a member of the Japan Professional Photographers Society (JPS).