photographs

photographs is the final book in Yoshiyuki Okuyama's trilogy after flowers (2021) and windows (2023). This time he turns to the memory of his own family. Published by Akaaka Art Publishing in 2026.

The story behind the book

Okuyama's studio is in the house where his grandparents and father once lived. During its renovation he found more than 100 family albums at the back of a closet. Turning the pages, he met his father, mother and grandparents, and ancestors he had never known, and faced the fact that he exists at the end of their countless choices. It raised a question: within the small community of a family, how do you live as an individual?

In the book, the people in those family photographs are released as dazzling light. Pictures that were once portraits of specific people loosen into open scenes that hold each viewer's own memories. Okuyama works in the tension between inheritance and independence.

What is in the book

• Images made from photographs in his family's albums
• The closing volume of the flowers, windows and photographs trilogy
• Cloth hardcover, 300 × 256 mm

About Yoshiyuki Okuyama

Born in 1991 in Tokyo, Okuyama received an Excellence Award at the 34th Canon New Cosmos of Photography and the 47th Kodansha Publishing Culture Award for photography.