Tadayuki Naitoh

Who is Tadayuki Naitoh?

Tadayuki Naitoh is a Japanese photographer known for his photographs of jazz musicians and of Africa.

Naitoh was born in Asakusa, Tokyo in 1941. He graduated from a photography course at Tōkyō Dezaināzu Gakuin in 1964. In 1970 he set up his own company, Photohouse OM.

From an early age he became interested in jazz and photography, and he began photographing jazz musicians in performance in his early 20s. In 1970, he published a photo book on the trumpet player Terumasa Hino. He travelled widely in Africa, Asia and America, leading to a number of unusual and arresting images: Zebra, a collection of his photographs of zebras, was published in 1988, and other works have used design themes from zebras, often in collages. More recently he has moved into photographing lotuses.

Outside Japan, Naitoh is perhaps best known for his photographs of Miles Davis, which include those used on the sleeves of the 1976 albums Pangaea and Agharta, and a limited edition CD release of Black Beauty: Live at the Fillmore West. Naitoh has also produced recordings.

Naitoh's works are held in the permanent collections of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and Kawasaki City Museum.