Shinzō Fukuhara

Who was Shinzō Fukuhara?

Shinzō Fukuhara was a renowned Japanese photographer.

He was born in Kyōbashi-ku, Tokyo, on 25 July 1883, as the fourth son of Arinobu Fukuhara, the head of Apothecary Shiseidō and Toku Fukuhara. The third brother predeceased his birth, so he was named and treated as the third son. His two other elder brothers also died young, but the next brother, Rosō, would also win fame as a photographer; and, to a lesser degree, his youngest brother Nobuyoshi would too, under the name Tōru Namiki.

Fukuhara first used a camera in 1896, if not earlier. He went to Columbia University to study pharmacology in 1908, and after his graduation traveled around England, Germany and Italy before settling in Paris in 1913. While there he certainly viewed much art and is likely to have seen various exhibitions of post-Impressionist works; Iizawa sees the influence of artists such as Seurat in Fukuhara's photographs later collected as “Paris and the Seine”.

Fukuhara died on 4 November 1948.