The is an art museum focused on photograph

Photograph

A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...

y. The museum was founded by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and is located in Meguro-ku

Meguro, Tokyo

is one of the 23 special wards of Tokyo, Japan. It calls itself Meguro City in English.Meguro hosts fifteen foreign embassies and consulates. One of Tokyo's most exclusive residential neighborhoods is located in Meguro....

, a short walk from Ebisu station

Ebisu Station (Tokyo)

is a railway station locatedin the Ebisu neighborhood of Tokyo's Shibuya ward. The train station is named after Yebisu Beer, which used to be brewed nearby...

 in southwest Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

. The museum also has a movie theater

Movie theater

A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....

The museum nicknames itself "Syabi"

History and exhibitions

The museum opened in a temporary building in 1990 and moved to its current building in Yebisu Garden Place in 1995. At that time, it was one of the first photography galleries in Japan not to be dedicated to the works of a single photographer. Most of the exhibitions since then have been themed rather than devoted to a single photographer, but exhibitions have been dedicated to such photographers of the past as Berenice Abbott

Berenice Abbott

Berenice Abbott , born Bernice Abbott, was an American photographer best known for her black-and-white photography of New York City architecture and urban design of the 1930s.-Youth:...

 (1990) and Tadahiko Hayashi

Tadahiko Hayashi

was a Japanese photographer noted for a wide range of work including documentary and portraiture.-Youth and early career:...

 (1993–94), and also to living photographers including Martin Parr

Martin Parr

Martin Parr is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector. He is known for his photographic projects that take a critical look at aspects of modern life, in particular provincial and suburban life in England...

 (2007) and Hiromi Tsuchida

Hiromi Tsuchida

is a renowned Japanese photographer.Tsuchida has produced several collections of photographs of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. He has produced many influential photo books such as Zokushin, counting the sand and new counting the sand and The Berlin Wall...

 (2008).

In order to appeal to children as well as adults, the gallery holds exhibitions of anime

Anime

is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

and video games.

The library of the gallery has a substantial collection of books of photographs.

As of late 2008, the gallery has no printed catalogue or electronic catalogue available externally. However, the book 328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers presents a comment on and a small reproduction of a sample photograph of each of over three hundred photographers represented in the permanent collection of the gallery at the turn of the millennium. Most of the individual exhibitions are accompanied by printed catalogues

Exhibition catalogue

There are two types of exhibition catalogue : a printed list of exhibits at an art exhibition; and a directory of exhibitors at a trade fair or business-to-business event.-Art or museum exhibition catalogues:...

; as is customary in Japan, most of these lack ISBNs and are not distributed as are regular books, their sales instead being limited to the museum itself.

Photographers whose work is included in the permanent collection include Shihachi Fujimoto

Shihachi Fujimoto

was a renowned Japanese photographer.Fujimoto's works are in the permanent collection of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.Iida City Museum runs a photographic contest, Fujimoto Shihachi Shashin Bunka-shō , in his honour.-References:...

, Hisae Imai

Hisae Imai

was a renowned Japanese photographer who specialized in the photography of horses.Born in Tokyo in 1931, Imai graduated from Bunka Gakuin in 1952. She had her first solo exhibition in 1952; from the 1970s, most of her numerous solo exhibitions were of photographs of horses.Imai died on 17 February...

, Takeji Iwamiya

Takeji Iwamiya

was a Japanese photographer particularly known for his depiction of architecture, gardens, and Japanese crafts.-Career:Iwamiya was born on 4 January 1920 in Yonago, Tottori, the second son of parents running a shop selling traditional confectionery...

, Akira Komoto

Akira Komoto

Born Masaaki Komoto in Ōmori-ku, Tokyo on 14 August 1935, Komoto was brought up in Seki, Gifu Prefecture. He studied at Gifu University, graduating in 1958; and until 1962 at the graduate school of Tokyo University of Education .Nomoto has created paintings, prints and photographs from the 1960s...

, Motoichi Kumagai, Seiji Kurata

Seiji Kurata

is a Japanese photographer.-Career:Kurata graduated from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1968. He taught in secondary school and worked in oils, printmaking, and experimental movies....

, Michiko Matsumoto

Michiko Matsumoto

is a renowned Japanese photographer.She was born in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, in 1950, and in 1974 graduated from Hosei University . She is currently based in Tokyo....

, Aizō Morikawa

Aizo Morikawa

was a renowned Japanese portrait and commercial photographer.Born in Fukui Prefecture in 1878, Fukui went some time around 1897 to Sapporo, where he studied photography under Tokiwa Mishima in Mishima's studio...

, Eiichi Moriwaki

Eiichi Moriwaki

was a Japanese photographer.Almost nothing about Moriwaki is known. In the 1930s he was a member of the Osaka Camera Group of Kiyoshi Koishi, and in the late thirties a member of Rōka Photography Club ....

, 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 in 1964. In 1970 he set up his own company, Photohouse OM....

, Kiyoshi Nishiyama

Kiyoshi Nishiyama

was a versatile Japanese amateur photographer who specialized in landscapes.Born in Tokyo in 1893 as Kiyonosuke Nishiyama , Nishiyama became interested in photography at 15...

, Yoshino Ōishi

Yoshino Oishi

is a renowned Japanese photojournalist.Ōishi was born in Suginami-ku, Tokyo on 28 May 1944. Seeing Melanesian art while at Nihon University had a big effect on her, as did a visit to Vietnam and Cambodia in 1966. After graduating in photography, she became a freelance photojournalist, working in...

, Kōji Satō

Koji Sato (photographer)

was a renowned Japanese amateur photographer, particularly in the 1930s. was born in Kumagaya, Saitama on 1 November 1911. From the age of thirteen Satō had a Thornton reflex camera; on his graduation from school he took photographs in his free time from his work in a bicycle wholesaler...

, Tokihiro Satō

Tokihiro Sato

Recognized for his playful interaction of light, Sato uses a large-format camera for exposures that last from one to three hours, while he moves through the space creating points of light or illuminated lines drawn with flashlights or flashes made by reflecting mirrors. The results are detailed...

, Bukō Shimizu

Buko Shimizu

was a Japanese photographer who lived in and photographed Chichibu .Shimizu was born on 12 October 1913 in Chichibu, the eldest son of the family running a photography studio in Kumaki, Chichibu...

, Mieko Shiomi

Mieko Shiomi

was a Japanese amateur photographer.Shiomi joined the Tampei Photography Club in 1948, and thereafter joined two other photography groups while also exhibiting in the Nikakai Photography Section...

, Teikō Shiotani

Teiko Shiotani

Shiotani was born on 22 October 1899 in Akasaki Tottori. He enjoyed photography from his youth, and in 1919 set up the "Vest Club" Shiotani was born on 22 October 1899 in Akasaki (since 2004 Kotoura) Tottori. He enjoyed photography from his youth, and in 1919 set up the "Vest Club" Shiotani was...

, Raghubir Singh, Yutaka Takanashi

Yutaka Takanashi

is a Japanese photographer who has photographed fashion, urban design, and city life, and is best known for his depiction of Tokyo.-Life and career:...

, Toyoko Tokiwa

Toyoko Tokiwa

is a Japanese photographer best known for her 1957 book of text and photographs Kiken na Adabana , and particularly for its portrayal of the red-light district of post-occupation Yokohama, with US servicemen.-Life and career:...

, and Haruo Tomiyama

Haruo Tomiyama

is a versatile Japanese photographer, active since the 1960s.-Life and work:Born in Kanda on 25 February 1935, Tomiyama dropped out of evening high school in 1956 to study photography for himself....

.

As of 2010, there is no entrance charge for the building or its research facilities, but each exhibition has an entrance charge.

External links

• Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography official website