(b Kumamoto, 14 Dec 1889; d Tokyo, 8 Feb 1960). Japanese photographer. He learnt photographic techniques at Nagasaki and opened a photographic portrait studio in Kobe in 1918. He was interested not only in portraiture but also in other photographic genres. His photograph Village Bathed in Evening Sun won first prize in the first All-Kansai Photography Competition. In 1922 he founded the monthly photography magazine Hakuyo, publishing not only his own works but those of photographers Sunao Morita, Gesshu Ogawa (1891-1967), Yasuzo Nojima and Seiyo Sakakibara in high-quality collotype. In November 1922 the Japanese Photographic Art Association (Nihon Koga Geijutsu Kyokai) was founded, mainly from the subscribers to the magazine, and an annual exhibition was organized. From c. 1925 Fuchigami and a group of photographers, known as Kosei-ha ('Constructivist school'), moved away from soft-focus photographs of nature and began to treat the picture surface as an abstract work. The European Futurist and Dadaist movements exerted some influence on the group, particularly on the work of Kikuji Nishi, Jun Tsusaka and Saigoro Matsuo. In 1928 Fuchigami went to the Japanese colony of Manchuria to run the railway advertising and information service, and the Japanese Photographic Art Association dissolved. In 1934 he set up the Manchurian Photographers Association.
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