For its first exhibition devoted to still photography, Japan House London brings together two major figures of Japanese photography: Kawada Kikuji, born in 1933, and Iwane Ai, born in 1975. Titled Kyotographie: Kawada Kikuji x Iwane Ai, the exhibition marks the two artists’ first joint presentation.
Born in 1933, Kawada Kikuji established himself in the 1960s as one of the most singular photographers of his generation. His body of work, at once prolific and shape-shifting, traces the transformations of postwar Japan and questions, across the decades, how the country has rebuilt and redefined its identity. In 1960, he took part in founding VIVO, a collective bringing together a number of young photographers eager to break with the conventions of their time. His work was notably shown at MoMA in New York in 1974. In 2011, the Photographic Society of Japan awarded him a prize honoring his entire career.
The London exhibition looks in particular at Chizu (The Map, 1965), a series that became one of the most important photobooks in Japanese history. In it, Kawada photographs the traces, scars, and signs left by the war, notably in Hiroshima, without seeking to describe them documentarily. In Los Caprichos (1968–1981), made up of urban snapshots, his gaze becomes more fragmentary and enigmatic. Together, these bodies of work mark a decisive break with earlier generations of Japanese photographers. The selection devoted to Kawada was curated by Sayaka Takahashi, of the PGI gallery in Tokyo.
Alongside him, Iwane Ai, born in Tokyo in 1975 and educated in the United States through high school, has developed a photography deeply shaped by displacement and stories of migration. Her work is often built between multiple territories and multiple memories. In Kipuka (2018), she turns to Japanese communities settled in Hawaii, in particular those whose roots trace back to Fukushima. Originally trained through magazine commissions, Iwane has since developed an award-winning body of work exhibited at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, as well as in museums and galleries around the world.
With A New River (2020), Iwane traveled to the Tōhoku region during the Covid-19 pandemic. Cherry trees photographed at night stand alongside figures drawn from Japanese supernatural folklore. Between isolation, the fragility of the world, the passage of time, and hope, the series turns the landscape into a mental space where the present seems to converse with ancient stories. A New River is presented in London alongside Kipuka, as two variations on memory, belonging, and the ties that persist despite distance.
The exhibition is organized by the team of KYOTOGRAPHIE International Photography Festival, one of the most important photography festivals in Asia. Founded in 2013 by Lucille Reyboz and Nakanishi Yūsuke, every spring KYOTOGRAPHIE takes over Kyoto’s cultural venues — traditional houses, temples, galleries, and museums — turning the city into a vast territory devoted to photography. In 2025, the festival drew close to 300,000 visitors. Iwane was featured there in 2022, Kawada in 2024. Their reunion at Japan House London marks their first joint exhibition.
For Simon Wright, director of programming at Japan House, this exhibition represents “a great privilege”: “This is the first time Japan House London has devoted an exhibition to photography.” He highlights the two artists’ ability to address phenomena that concern us all. The exhibition is threaded through with stories of past and present that, on reflection, invite us to imagine our future together, whatever our origin.
Through Kawada and Iwane, Kyotographie thus brings into dialogue two generations and two ways of looking at Japan; one turned toward the wounds and upheavals of the postwar years, the other toward movement, migration, and contemporary forms of memory. A meeting between two temporalities, but also between two ways of making photographs, a place where the intimate meets history.
Jean-Jacques Ader
Kyotographie: Kawada Kikuji x Iwane Ai Exhibition, 3 June to 18 October 2026 at Japan House London. Information: https://www.japanhouselondon.uk/
