A few weeks ago Ryo Futamura of Japan’s Einstein Studio wrote in about their latest publication, Nice to Meet You. The mission of the organization, through publications and contests such as this, as Futamura told me, is to find and show the world young and talented photographers in Japan.
Nice to Meet You is a small magazine highlighting winners of the Japan Photo Award (previously known as the Einstein Photo Award). As you can see above, the work selected is a bit of a grab bag, but much of it is intriguing. I’m particularly interested in the images because they look so much different from what I think of as “Japanese Photography” (which is mostly just Daido Moriyama‘s harrowing work). Futamura said that many of these photographers have had difficulty getting their work out to audiences outside of Japan, and even within the country, the market for this type of work is quite small.
While it will be hard to get a copy of Nice to Meet You unless you’re in Japan, you can see work from all of the artists on the publication’s site. Here are a few that grabbed my eye: Daisuke Matsumoto, Hideki Masuda, Junicci Hayakawa, Arata Kato, Yasuhito Hatajima, Yuya Kaai.