The winners of the 40th Kimura Ihei Photography Award have been announced.
Since its inception in 1975, the award has honored emerging photographers with outstanding work. Photography professionals submit nominations through a survey, and a selection committee selects the winner from among them. This year's selection committee consists of four photographers: Mitsuaki Iwago, Masato Seto, Ryudai Takano, and Yurie Nagashima, plus Hiroto Sasaki, editor-in-chief of Asahi Camera.
This year's winner is Ryuichi Ishikawa, author of "Polyphony of Breathtaking Views" and "Okinawa Portraits 2010-2012." Ishikawa, a native of Okinawa Prefecture, discovered photography during his university years and studied under photographer Tetsushi Yuzaki in 2010. The following year, he participated in the Tomatsu Shomei Digital Photography Workshop, and in 2012 won an Honorable Mention at the 35th New Cosmos of Photography Awards for his work "Okinawa Portraits." The other winner, Kawashima Kotori, is a photographer from Tokyo whose work has been published in magazines such as Myojo. After graduating from university, he apprenticed under Numata Genki. In 2006, he won the 10th Shinpusha Hirama Itaru Photography Grand Prize for a series of photographs he took of a single girl over a four-year period. In 2011, he won the 42nd Kodansha Publishing Culture Photography Award for Mirai-chan, which featured the daughter of a friend of Sado's. The award ceremony was held on April 27th at the Ginko Club in Marunouchi, Tokyo, where the winners were presented with certificates, medals, and prize money of 500,000 yen. In addition, an exhibition of the winning works will be held at the Konica Minolta Plaza in Shinjuku, Tokyo, from April 11th to 20th.