YAMAZAWA Eiko “What I Am Doing”

LAG is pleased to present What I Am Doing, an exhibition by YAMAZAWA Eiko, on view from July 3 through July 25, 2026.

This exhibition is presented as a partner program of I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now, organized by The Bunkamura Museum of Art and held at Hikarie Hall. In conjunction with the exhibition’s reexamination of the pioneering practices and achievements of women photographers in Japan, LAG focuses on YAMAZAWA Eiko, one of the key figures featured in the exhibition.

YAMAZAWA Eiko (1899–1995) is widely regarded as one of the pioneering women photographers in Japan. After studying in the United States in the 1920s, she returned to Japan and established a photography studio in Osaka. While building a distinguished career in portraiture and commercial photography, she continued throughout her life to explore the possibilities of photographic expression.

Active from the prewar through the postwar period, YAMAZAWA is recognized as one of the few women photographers who played a significant role in the development of modern Japanese photography. Her practice extended beyond portrait and commercial work, encompassing a sustained engagement with modernist photography and abstraction. In recent years, her pioneering achievements have received renewed attention.

This exhibition presents What I Am Doing, one of YAMAZAWA’s major late-career series. In these works, she experimentally explores relationships between color, form, light, and shadow through everyday objects and photographic materials. Grounded in the perspective and experience she cultivated over decades as a photographer, the series reveals the enduring curiosity and spirit of inquiry that sustained her artistic practice throughout her life.