PHOTOGRAPHER KEIZO KITAJIMA HAS SPENT HIS LIFE CAPTURING GRITTY STREET PORTRAITS

To call Keizo Kitajima’s work ‘street photography’ would be an oversimplification. The iconic Japanese photographer has documented the urban street life of cities from Tokyo to New York to Moscow for decades. His work — gritty, experimental, confrontational — has inspired a generation of young street photographers and pushed the boundaries of Japanese photo aesthetics — rough, intense, blurred. His high-contrast scenes from Tokyo’s nightlife; his saturated color photographs of New York in the 70’s and 80’s was street photography pushed to its rawest, most experimental limits in what he calls “un-identity.” <img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1000/1*zgSQBJC-dBu-C67-2ds-eQ.png" style="height:704px; width:1000px" /> It was this energy that initially caught the attention of Rei Kawakubo who commissioned Kitajma for the 1995 Comme des Garçons advertising campaign. The brand was already known for its has partnerships with boundary-pushing artists and photographers to create ads that were simultaneously weirdly beautiful and captivating. <a href="https://medium.com/@VikkiTobak/photographer-keizo-kitajima-has-spent-his-life-capturing-gritty-street-portraits-c37f2a75f406">Website</a>