Image: The Photographers' Gallery, An Un.titled Site
The Photographers’ Gallery in London will host ‘Beyond Labels: Japanese Women Photographers’ on 18 September 2026, bringing three artists from its current exhibition together with curator, writer and critic Takeuchi Mariko. The one-day programme will examine the cultural, historical and political circumstances surrounding women’s photographic practice in Japan from the 1990s to the present.
Running from 11am to 5.30pm, the event will feature talks and moderated discussions with Iwane Ai, Nagashima Yurie and Narahashi Asako, all of whom are included in ‘Japanese Women Photographers: From 1950s to Now’. Takeuchi, who co-curated the exhibition, will deliver the keynote address on the wider conditions affecting women in Japan. Tickets are priced at £15, with reduced admission of £10 for members and concessions.
The programme responds to a history in which international attention on Japanese photography has largely focused on male figures including Hiroshi Sugimoto, Daidō Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki. The gallery states that women photographers in Japan were, until recently, overlooked or dismissed, including through the controversial label ‘girls’ photography’—or ‘onnanoko shashin’—applied by male critics and the wider media to a group of women artists who emerged during the 1990s.
Nagashima has directly challenged that categorisation. Her practice began with photographs of herself and her family at home, including nude images that received the PARCO prize at the 1993 Urbanart#2 open-call exhibition. Her work has continued to address gender and social-class issues in Japanese society and the photography world. Her 2020 manifesto, ‘From their “girls’ photography” to our Girly Photo’, argues for a more expansive understanding of the artists grouped under the earlier term.
Iwane began her career in 1996 after studying in the United States and initially worked as a photographer for Japanese publications. Since 2011, she has explored connections between the United States and Fukushima through experiences of migration and displacement. That project became the 2018 book ‘kipuka’, which received the Kimura Ihei Photography Award, the Ina Nobuo Award and the 2022 Prix Pictet Japan Award, according to the gallery.
Narahashi’s career spans photography, publishing and artist-led infrastructure. After making extensive photo diaries and travelling throughout Japan in the late 1980s, she opened the 03FOTOS gallery in Tokyo in 1990. In 1996, she co-founded the self-published magazine ‘main’ with photographer Ishiuchi Miyako. Takeuchi, meanwhile, is Professor and Head of the Arts Major in the Graduate School at Kyoto University of the Arts and leads the expanded Tokyo presentation of the exhibition at Hikarie Hall.
‘Japanese Women Photographers: From 1950s to Now’ presents more than 200 photographs, videos, installations and rare photobooks by 27 artists. Curated by Lesley A. Martin, Takeuchi Mariko and Pauline Vermare, with additional curatorial collaboration in London from Taous Dahmani, it remains on view at The Photographers’ Gallery through 27 September 2026. A related online course, ‘Japanese photography reconsidered: Women in focus’, runs from 16 September to 21 October.
