Portfolio Review
ポートフォリオレビュー

Simon Baker has been director of MEP since May, 2018. Prior to this he was Senior Curator, International Art (Photography) at Tate, London where he curated exhibitions including Don McCullin (Tate Britain, 2019), Shape of Light (Tate Modern, 2018) Performing for the Camera (Tate Modern, 2016), Conflict, Time, Photography (Tate Modern, 2014), and William Klein + Daido Moriyama (Tate Modern, 2012). His first exhibitions for MEP, which opened in March 2019, were Coco Capitan: Busy Living, and Ren Hang: Love, Ren Hang. Simon Baker has a PhD in History of Art and was Associate Professor of Art History at the Nottingham University (2004-2009). He has published widely on the history of art including the recent monograph George Condo: Painting Reconfigured (Thames and Hudson, 2015). Recent publications on photography include essays for books on Coco Capitan, Antony Cairns, Mari Katayama and Maya Rochat.

Sawako Fukai is an independent art project coordinator based in Tokyo. After working as a director of contemporary photography gallery G/P gallery and artbeat publishers for ten years, she has been dedicating herself in working for international projects in relation with contemporary photography and design. She also works as a translator, editor and producer of Tokyo Photographic Research project.

Hideko Kataoka has been director of photography at Newsweek Japan, since 2001. She joined the magazine as a photographer in 1991, covering national news, social issues and portraiture of world business and cultural leaders. As director of photography, she oversees and directs photography both for the printed and digital editions of the magazine as well as its special issues. Since 2004, She launched the Picture Power section in the magazine, a weekly photo essay that captures underreported topics around the world, a book “Ten Years of Picture Power”, with selected photo stories from the section, was published in 2014. Hideko is a lecturer in photojournalism and documentary photography at Tokyo Polytechnic University since 2013, does portfolio reviews and has served as a juror at international photography festivals and competitions, such as World Press Photo, FotoFest and many others.　

Graduated from Sophia University in Tokyo, majored in the journalism. Started to organize the exhibition of photography in Pacific Press Service(PPS) in Tokyo.
After leaving PPS, studied the French language at the Sorbonne University in Paris.
Translater and interpreter as freekance, in the same time worked to organize the exhibitions of photography.
Founded Contact. Co.,ltd. in 2012, since then organized and curated many traveling exhibitions like Robert Doisneau,
Jacques Henri Lartigue, Shoji Ueda, Shigeo Gocho, Saul Leiter, etc.

An Art Critic and a Curator, Pascal Beausse is currently the Head of the Photographic Collections at the Centre national des arts plastiques (National Center for Visual Arts) in Paris.
He has published essays, articles, interviews and catalogues on the work of Maria Thereza Alves, Jimmie Durham, David Lamelas, Teresa Margolles, Allan Sekula, Bruno Serralongue, Jean-Luc Vilmouth, Wang Du, among others.
Recent exhibitions curated by Pascal Beausse include: Hanako Murakami, Conception (Rencontres d’Arles, 2019), Kai Fusayoshi, Living as a Poet in Kyōto (Nijo castle, Kyoto, 2019), Ange Leccia (PhotoSaintGermain, Paris, 2019), Kenryou Gu, 15972 Sampling (Kyotographie, 2019), Hiroshima Art Document (Former Bank of Japan, Hiroshima, 2019), among others.
Pascal Beausse was a resident at Villa Kujoyama, Kyoto, in 2007.

Katsura Kunieda was born in Tokyo and completed a Master's degree in Contemporary Art Theory at the University of London's Goldsmiths College. She assumed her current position after working at the Mori Art Museum, Marugame City Genichiro Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, and ROHM Theatre Kyoto. Major exhibitions include Martino Gamper's "100 Chairs in 100 Days", Teppei Kaneuji's "Zones", and Lieko Shiga's "Blind Date", all at the Genichiro Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art. In addition, she planned the performance introduction series "PLAY", also at the Genichiro Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, and managed "vol.01-03 Yuya Tsukahara from contact Gonzo" and "vol.04 Yumitsu Araki".

Jeong eun Kim is Chief editor of IANN, the contemporary art magazine in Asia and founder of IANNBOOKS established in 2007. Serving as chief coordinator of DAEGU PHOTO BIENNALE 2012 and curator of SEOUL PHOTO FESTIVAL 2010, she has been widely involved in curatorial activities within the field of photography. In an effort to introduce the contemporary photography scene of Asia, she continues to publish numerous art and photo books. She is currently the director and founder of THE REFERENCE SEOUL, contributing and manage international partnerships and alliances between the public, commercial and nonprofit sectors in Asia arts and culture.

Osamu James Nakagawa is the Ruth N. Halls Distinguished Professor of Photography at Indiana University, where he directs the Center for Integrative Photographic Studies. Born in New York City, he was raised in Tokyo, Japan, and returned to Houston, Texas, at 15 to complete his education. He is a recipient of the 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2010 Higashikawa New Photographer of the Year, and 2015 Sagamihara Photographer of the Year in Japan. Nakagawa’s work has been exhibited internationally. His collaborative curatorial projects and exhibition projects include, Contemplation: Emerging Female Photographers from Japan, cocurated with Marko Takeuchi, Pictura Gallery; Future Tense: A New Monochromatic; Jerry Uelsmann +Maggie Taylor, cocurated with Mia Dalglish and Lisa Woodward, Pictura Gallery; Unsettled: Tracy Templeton, co-produced with Takashi Kakishima, Poetic Scape. Nakagawa served as a judge for the 2016 Canon New Cosmos of Photography International Award. Nakagawa’s work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; George Eastman Museum; Tokyo Photographic Art Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and others. Nakagawa is represented by PGI, Tokyo.

Born in 1976, after graduating with a degree in sociology from National Taiwan University, she went to the United States and Japan to study contemporary art and photography, then started her career as a critic, curator and book translator. She has been writing as a columnist in numerous magazines(iweekly, Shanghai, 2014-16) (ARTCO, Beijing, 2015-18) (Cans Asia Art News, Taipei, 2020-), and teaching lectures in art institutions such as Xue Xue Institute(Taipei), Fubon Art Foundation(Taipei) and Light Society(Beijing). From 2014 to 2017, she operated aura gallery taipei, which was one of the most well-known photography galleries in China and Taiwan. In 2018, Each Modern was founded, focusing on post-war, contemporary art and photography.

Karen Smith is a British curator and art historian specialized in the field of contemporary Chinese art. Currently residing in Shanghai, she has been based in China since 1992. She is appointed founding director of OCAT Xi’an, a contemporary art museum under the OCAT Museum Group. In recent years, she has also been involved with directing the exhibition programme at Shanghai Center of Photography, founded 2015.

Smith has contributed writings to a wide array of publications, including artist monographs, exhibition catalogues, and thematic surveys of art movements. Texts appear in Art Now Volume 4 (Taschen, 2013); Vitamin D2 (Phaidon, 2012); Vitamin P2, (Phaidon, 2011) and numerous other similar volumes. She is author of the volume on Ai Weiwei in the Phaidon contemporary artist series (2009) as well as her own books: Nine Lives: The Birth of Avant-Garde Art in New China (2008) and the series As Seen; Notable Artworks by Chinese Artists (2011; 2013; 2015).

Goto is an independent curator based in Tokyo. Her work field is a comprehensive produce related to photography including curation, photo-editing, publishing, reserch, consulting, education and development of human resource. Her main themes are war, contemporary social issues, human rights, women’s rights, and so on. Past works of hers include campaigns and publications with photographs for NGOs, humanitarian aid, and human rights groups, selections, nominations, curations, and productions of international awards, and photography festivals. She is also co-director and curator of Reminders Photography Stronghold which is a curated membership gallery in Tokyo making multi-photographic activities possible.

Hisako has done practicing as a producer, writer, editor and consultant. She has collaboratively curated exhibitions, including　""Future Recollection"" (Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, 1997), “Move on Asia” (Alternative Space Loop,ZKM etc, 2002-2018), “Roppongi Crossing 2004” (Mori Art Museum, 2004), “Between Site and Space” (Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya, 2008, ARTSSPACE Sydney, 2009), “Aichi Triennial 2010” (Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, etc, 2010).
Her field of study is contemporary art, cultural policies. She is Professor of Osaka Electro-Communication University.

Mika Kobayashi is a photo critic and curator who writes for magazines and websites, and has taught at schools and institutions in both Japan and overseas. From 2007 to 2008, she resided in the United States as a grantee of the Asian Cultural Council and Patterson Fellowship, and worked on exhibitions and research to introduce Japanese photography at the International Center of Photography in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She has been a guest researcher at the Museum of Modern Art bwetween 2010 and March, 2019, and a part-time lecturer at Tokyo Polytechnic University since 2014.

Mutsuko Ota is Editorial Director of IMA magazine. born in Tokyo, 1968. She started her career as an editor at Marie Claire and worked at several men’s magazines such as Esquire, GQ and others as feature editor on travel, gastronomy, culture, art and photography among other areas. Along with collaborating with several magazines as a freelance editor, she also became involved in various fields including art projects, book and catalogue editing, and film promotion throughout her career. She published IMA magazine in 2012. While she participates in magazines As an editorial director, photo books and exhibitions, she runs IMA gallery in Tennousu, Tokyo.

Tomoki Matsumoto is the editor and director of T&M Projects. He founded T&M Projects in 2014 and undertakes the editing and publishing of art books and photo collections. He has published the collected works of Japanese authors such as Rieko Shiga, Masaru Tatsuki, Masao Yamamoto, and Ayaka Yamamoto, as well as international authors such as Anders Peterson and Lin Chipen. In addition to publishing, he has also directed a number of creative projects.

Born in Osaka, AYA Tomoka is the owner and director of The Third Gallery Aya, established in 1996. The gallery opened at the Ishiuchi Municipal Exhibition, dealing primarily with photography and contemporary art. In addition to the exhibitions at the gallery, the artist of the gallery, OKANOUE Toshiko's photo collage exhibition “Miracle of Silence” was displayed at the Tokyo Metropolitan Garden Museum in 2019. The artist of the gallery, YAMAZAWA Eiko's exhibition “What I am doing” was displayed at the Otani Memorial Art Museum in Nishinomiya City in May and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in November in 2019 as 120th anniversary of her birth. In 1997, AYA produced a video titled “6 Works and 6 Artists – Being an Artist/Photographer”, a collection of interviews with six female photographers: AKIOKA Miho, ISHIUCHI Miyako, KODAMA Fusako ,NAGAHARA Yuri, MATSUO Hiroko and MATSUMOTO Michiko. In 2002, she served as supervising editor of the photography magazine “SHABA SHABA”, which published its final issue in 2005. In 2007, AYA curated a group exhibition titled “Comical&Cynical – Contemporary Photography of Korea and Japan” and toured Korea the following year.

Born in Tokyo in 1986. Joined TOP in 2013 after curating at the Musashino Art University Museum and Library. Major exhibitions he has been curated include “Things So Faint But Real: Contemporary Japanese Photography vol. 15”, “Nagashima Yurie: And a Pinch of Irony with a Hint of Love” and “In the Here and Now - TOP Collection: Scrolling Through Heisei Part1”.

Naoko Ohta was born in Tokyo. After completing primary education at Shirayuri Gakuen, she enrolled in Waseda University's Faculty of Literature and graduated with a major in Art History. After graduating university, she studied abroad in Cambridge, England. Her research focuses on the paintings of the pre-Raphaelite school and the early history of European photography. In 1986, she established KLEE INC, a company which produces projects and initiatives centered on global cultural exchange and artistic activities. Ohta has received high acclaimed and trust for her quality control and comprehensive art direction, which includes curation, operations, and publishing.

Mika Kobayashi is a photo critic and curator who writes for magazines and websites, and has taught at schools and institutions in both Japan and overseas. From 2007 to 2008, she resided in the United States as a grantee of the Asian Cultural Council and Patterson Fellowship, and worked on exhibitions and research to introduce Japanese photography at the International Center of Photography in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She has been a guest researcher at the Museum of Modern Art bwetween 2010 and March, 2019, and a part-time lecturer at Tokyo Polytechnic University since 2014.

After working for a financial institution and starting his own investment company, Hiroshi Onishi launched Article, an art information magazine, in 2008. In 2012, he co-founded shashasha.co, an online bookstore with a focus on photo collections from Japan and Asia. In 2015, he established Case Publishing. Focusing on the publication of photo collections and art books, Onishi has worked tirelessly to explore the potential of books as new media, with a personal manifesto of "books as expression". His recent activities include the publication of the Japan Pavilion catalog at the 58th Venice Biennale and active participation in 30 book fairs annually, including Paris Photo.

Katsuya Ishida established MEM, a contemporary art gallery, in Osaka in 1997. The gallery relocated to NADiff A/P/A/R/T in Ebisu, Tokyo in 2010. Initially, the gallery focused on displaying the works of artists who emerged in the Kansai region during the 80’s, such as Tomoaki Ishihara, Chie Matsui, and Yasumasa Morimura, but gradually began to include other eras and to showcase the paintings, photography, video, and sculpture of international and domestic contemporary artists and photographers. Showcased photography includes the solo exhibitions of Katsumi Omori, Ken Kitano, Ayano Sudo, Keizo Motoda, Antoine d’Agata, and Charles Fréger. Additionally, Ishida has been involved in exhibition planning and the research and publishing of photography clubs and photographers active throughout the pre-war to post-war period and considered important to the modern history of Japanese photography. Major exhibitions planned and held at MEM include “The Iwata Nakayama Exhibition (2011)”, “The Tampei Photography Club Exhibition (2016)”, and “The Naniwa Photography Club Exhibition (2019)”. Avant-garde photographer Shigeru Onishi’s solo exhibition was planned in partnership with the photographer and is set to be held at the Foam Photography Museum in June of this year. Through participation in overseas photography fairs such as Paris Photo, Ishida’s work in art galleries has also become known internationally.

Taka Kawachi has extensive international experience, having graduated from the Academy of Art University of San Francisco, to then working in New York City as a book editor and curator for 15 years. Returning to Japan in 2011, he held the position of Director for the Amana Photo Collection, overseeing the development of the company’s acquisitions of more than 550 Japanese photographic works in four years. In 2016, Kawachi published his first book Art no Iriguchi (Entrance to the Arts, on American Art) followed by his second publication on European Art released in the fall of the same year. His publications illustrate his experiences of art and photography and offers readers an opportunity to engage with the history and subjects of both regions from his unique point of view. He is currenlty the Director of the Overseas Division of Kyoto’s Benrido, working to disseminate the classic and rare photographic process of Collotype, and produced portfolios of Saul Leiter and J.H. Lartigue, etc.

RongRong (China) and inri (Japan) have been working together since 2000. Their works reflect the intimate world that they have created together and push the boundaries of traditional black-and-white darkroom tech- niques. Their critically acclaimed series of works, such as Mt. Fuji (2001), Liulitun (1996-2003), and Tsumari Story (2012-2014), reflect their shared life and surroundings, delving into the rapidly changing world around them.
In 2007, RongRong & inri established the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in the Beijing arts district Caochangdi. In 2008, they launched the annual Three Shadows Photography Award, a prize aimed at discovering and encouraging China's most promising young photographers. In 2010, they started a collaboration with the Arles International Photography Festival and co-produced the Caochangdi Photo Spring Festival in Beijing for three years - from 2010 to 2012. They have continued this collaboration at Three Shadows' Xiamen loca- tion, where since 2015 they have co-hosted the Arles x Jimei Festival .
RongRong&inri received the Outstanding Contribution to Photography prize at the 2016 Sony World Photog- raphy Awards, recognized for both their careers as artists and their significant impact on Asian photography.

Shunji Dodo was born in Osaka Prefecture in 1947 and graduated from the Department of Photography at Kyushu Sangyo University in the Faculty of Arts. In 1996, he won the annual prize from the Photographic Society of Japan for his work "Kii Peninsula Paradise". In 1998, he became the principal of the Visual Arts College in Osaka. In 1999, he won the 24th Ina Nobuo Award for his work "1,000 Years Paradise". In 2007, he won the Japan Society for Arts and History of Photography Art Award. In 2011, he won the 23rd Society of Photography Prize and the 27th Higashikawa Prize for his work "Osaka". In 2015, he was appointed the director of the Nara City Museum of Photography.

Nicolas Jimenez is the director of photography of the French daily newspaper Le Monde. From 1999 to 2004 he worked, for the international festival of photojournalism Visa pour l'Image. In 2005, when Le Monde decided to become a major actor of the photo industry he became national photo editor until 2008, then the head of the photo department. Le Monde is now one of the three biggest photojournalism producer in french speaking press.

Annemarie Zethof was born in 1971 in the Netherlands. After a career of 10 years as a solicitor in Amsterdam, she switched to photography. She studied at the Fotoacademie in Amsterdam, Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London and has a Masters Degree in Photography from the University of Manchester. After having lived in London for nearly six years and having interned with James Hyman Gallery in London, she moved to Antwerp, Belgium to open a gallery specialized in Japanese photography together with her husband, Martijn van Pieterson. Since the opening of IBASHO in March 2015, the gallery has held 38 exhibitions in Antwerp, among others of Toshio Shibata, Asako Narahashi, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Yoshinori Mizutani, Miho Kajioka and VIVO. IBASHO has been participating at Paris Photo, Photo London, UNSEEN in Amsterdam, Haute Photographie in Rotterdam, Photo Basel and AIPAD in New York as a member. IBASHO will participate at Paris Photo New York this year. Annemarie is also an independent curator and works at photography projects. She curated an exhibition on ‘Japanese Nudes’ for the Japanmuseum Sieboldhuis in Leiden, the Netherlands, in 2019.

https://www.ibashogallery.com/

Chieko Kinoshita was born in 1971 and lives in Osaka. She began her current position in April of 2017 after working as an art producer at the Kobe Art Village Center and at the Osaka University Center for the Study of Communication Design (CSCD). Her specialties include modern art, cultural policy, and cultural project design. She has been involved in “Art Area B1”, a project developed and managed through the joint collaboration of companies and NPOs, as well as the art and culture network project “Creative Island Lab Nakanoshima”. In addition, she has served as a member of the executive committee for NAMURA ART MEETHING, curator for MEGA ART STORAGE KITAKAGAYA, offsite curator for Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions, and public program director for OKAYAMA ART SUMMIT, among others.

Born in 1974 in Zürich, Switzerland.
Stefano Stoll is Director and Curator of the Festival Images Vevey, in Switzerland. Since 2008, he has made monumental outdoor installations the speciality of this visual arts biennial.
Every second year, the Festival proposes site-specific photographic installations in Vevey’s streets and parks, on the facades of its buildings, in its museums and galleries, and even in Lake Geneva. He has collaborated with artists such as Cindy Sherman, Christian Marclay, Hans-Peter Feldman, Paul Fusco, René Burri, Lee Friedländer, Alex Prager, JR, Daido Moryiama, Christian Boltanski, Martin Parr and Alec Soth. He also manages an off-space dedicated to contemporary photography (Espace Images Vevey), as well as the Grand Prix Images Vevey, one of Europe’s longest standing grants for photographic creation. In 2019, he collaborated with Italian curator Arianna Catania to launch a new open-air site-specific biennial of Gibellina (Sicily).
He is regularly invited on international juries and chaired, for example, the Paul Huf Award (Amsterdam) in 2014. He is a member of AICA and writes on cultural policy, visual arts and photography. In 2019, he published The Book of Images (Koenig Books London), a dictionary of visual experiences featuring the 299 artists from 39 countries who took part in Images Vevey projects between 2008 and 2018.

General secretary of the Fonds de donation agnès b. scince 2016.
The Fonds de donation works to support art as a shared experience that is intimately linked to the senses, as well as the activities of the agnès b. endowment fund and artistic works that convey ideas in a profound way.
Ruiz intends for the Fonds de donation to contribute to the deep connection between solidarity, creation, and sharing.
He aims to further advance collaboration between industry and academia, the spread of contemporary art, and to encourage the emergence of new artists.
After graduetd from the University of Orleans, Sébastien Ruiz was responsible for the Taschen bookstore in Paris, Head of exhibitions at the National Center for Printed Arts in Chatou, Head of audiences at the Théâtre du Nord in Lille, Director of the Galerie du Jour agnès b.
In 2020, he opened the new base of the agnès b. : La Fab., A cultural and united factory in the heart of the 13th district of Paris.

Takahashi Mizuki completed her MA in the History of Art from Waseda University, Tokyo and The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
After serving as a founding curatorial member at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo from 1999-2003, Takahashi worked as senior curator at the Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito, where she realised numerous transdisciplinary exhibitions that brought together manga, film, fashion, architecture, performance art and contemporary art.
Her curated exhibitions in and outside Japan have included Eight Days: Beuys in Japan
(2009); Quiet Attentions: Departure from Women (2011); You reach out – right now – for
something: Questioning the Concept of Fashion (2013); TECHSTYLE Series 1.0 - Ariadne’s
Thread (2016); Line of Times (2017); (In)tangible Reminiscence (2018); Unfolding: Fabric of
Our Life (2019); N S Harsha: Gathering Delights (2019) and Sudo Reiko: Making NUNO
Textiles (2019). Takahashi was a research fellow at Central Saint Martins, The University of
the Arts London from 2015 to 2016, and writes and lectures extensively in Asia and Europe.

Cultural manager. Degree in Humanities. University of Navarra (2003) and Master in Photography. Art and Technic. Polytechnic University of Valencia (2005). From 2006 to 2012 was responsible of collections at CDAN. Art and Nature Center. Beulas Foundation, in Huesca. In 2013, she joined La Fábrica team and is the general coordinator of PHotoESPAÑA since 2016. She has curated exhibitions as independent curator and wrote for exhibition catalogs.