Kensuke Kazama

Who is Kensuke Kazama?

Kensuke Kazama is a Japanese photographer who for many years lived in and photographed the one-time mining town of Yūbari, Hokkaidō.

Born in Mie Prefecture, Kazama moved to Tokyo in 1978. He held exhibitions in Tokyo two years later. In 1987 he moved to Nanporo in Hokkaidō, and two years later to Yūbari.

Kazama's photographs of the town of Yūbari and its abandoned mines and mining paraphernalia are in black and white, and employ a medium-format camera for detail and small aperture for great depth of field, often allied with a formal composition. Mitsugu Ōnishi points out that the results "run counter to the ruins photography trend". From 1994 his photographs of Yūbari appeared in the magazines Nippon Camera and Asahi Camera; he also participated regularly in Higashikawa Photofesta.

Kazama won the 18th Higashikawa Special Prize in 2002 and the PSJ newcomer's award and the 18th Society of Photography Award in 2006.

In March 2006, Kazama moved to Mitaka, Tokyo. His subsequent photographs of nearby Inokashira Park, which employ the same techniques as his photographs of Yūbari, have been published.

Kazama later moved to Sayama, where in 2010 he was working more with photograms, mounting both food specimens and potato crisps lightly edited to resemble faces in a specially constructed negative carrier and enlarging from this.