Born in Hokkaido in 1936, Kurigami graduated from the Tokyo College of Photography in 1961. He began working as a freelance photographer in 1965, and developed one of the broadest lens-based practices in Japan, including many TV commercial projects, working primarily in the fields of fashion and advertising. He created the poster for the 1968 Osaka Expo along with Shigeo Fukuda, and he received the 21st ADC Award in 1977. Kazumi Kurigami Photographs – CRUSH (Hara Museum); Kurigami Kazumi: Portrait of a Moment (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum); PORTRAIT (Gallery 916); Lonesome Day Blues (Canon Gallery S); and April (Taka Ishii gallery). Directed the 2008 movie, Gelatin Silver, Love.

Born in Matsue City, Yamaguchi graduated with a degree in oil painting from the Tokyo University of the Arts. After working in the design room at Seibu Department Store’s advertising department, she became a freelance illustrator, producing ads for PARCO, a facility with a theater, cinema, museum, restaurants, and apparel shops. She started painting the female figure using airbrushes in 1972, and immediately became an iconic artist of the era.

Hatakeyama was born in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture in 1958. In 1984, after completing his master's degree at the University of Tsukuba, School of Art and Design, he was picked up by Seibu Saison Group’s in-house ad agency, SPN. When he began working in video production there, his boss, Hideki Izumi, asked him to direct a documentary film on Joseph Beuys' visit to Japan. The resulting 60-minute video work, Joseph Beuys in Japan, was subsequently screened around the world. In the same year, Peyotl Kobo produced and published Ein Dokument: 1984 Joseph Beuys in Japan, a boxed set containing video recordings and a book with the transcripts of all the lectures he gave during his stay in Japan, attracting much attention. Hatakeyama is currently a professor at the Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo University of the Arts (scheduled to retire in March 2025). Recent major exhibitions include Natural Stories (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum; Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) in 2011–2012; Cloven Landscape (Sendai Mediatheque) in 2017; and Naoya Hatakeyama – Excavating the Future City (Minneapolis Institute of Art) in 2018.｜Photo : ©buerofuerkunstdokumentation

Born in 1972, Kazama lives in Tokyo. She received a graduate degree in printmaking from Musashino Art University in 1996. She explores the past to find the roots of contemporary phenomena, creating mainly black and white woodblock prints with portentous dark clouds hanging over the future. Her woodblock prints incorporate a variety of motifs into a single, nonsensical manga-like image, and although she only uses a single color—black—she experiments with various forms of expression, such as using shades of light and dark, to skillfully express risqué themes through sharp lines etched with her carving knives. Her works can be found in the collections of museums inside and outside of Japan, including National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Mori Art Museum, Yokohama Museum of Art, National Museum of Art, Osaka; Museum of Modern Art (New York); and Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (Australia). She was the recipient of the 1st Tokyo Contemporary Art Award (2019) and was selected as a finalist for the Nissan Art Award 2020 (2020). Recent major exhibitions include 24th Biennale of Sydney (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2024); Reborn-Art Festival—Altruism and Fluidity (Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, 2021); Tokyo Contemporary Art Award 2019-2021 Exhibition—Sachiko Kazama: Magic Mountain (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2021); and Sachiko Kazama Concrete Suite (Kurobe City Art Museum, 2019).｜Photo : Yoko Asakai

Ishikawa was born in Tokyo in 1977 and received his Ph.D. from Tokyo University of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts. With interests in anthropology, folklore, and other fields, he continues to show his works even as he travels everywhere, including remote areas and major cities. In 2008, he received the Photographic Society of Japan's Newcomer's Award and the Kodansha Publication Culture Award for New Dimension (AKAAKA Art Publishing Inc.) and Polar (Little more Co., Ltd.). In 2011 he won the Domon Ken Award for Corona (Seidosha). In 2020 he received the Photographic Society of Japan's Lifetime Achievement Award for Everest (CCC Media House) and Marebito (Shogakukan). In 2023 he received the Higashikawa Awards Special Photographer Award and in 2024 he received a Medal with Dark Blue Ribbon (Medals of Honor awarded by the Emperor of Japan). His many books include The Last Adventurer (Shueisha) and Chijō ni seiza o tsukuru [Creating a constellation on Earth] (Shinchosha). Major solo exhibitions include Vette di luce. Naoki Ishikawa sulle Alpi Orobie, Accademia Carrara (Italy, 2023); Japonésia, Japan House São Paulo, The Oscar Niemeyer Museum (Brazil, 2020–2021); Capturing the Map of Light on This Planet; Art Tower Mito, Niigata City Art Museum, Ichihara Lakeside Museum, The Museum of Art Kochi, Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art and Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (2016–2019).

Tomozawa was born in Bordeaux, France in 1999. She paints unique portraits that combine slime-like materials and organic motifs. Although her compositions are simple, her realistic expression of the texture, translucency, and softness of the materials leave a strong impression on the viewer. She is studying oil painting in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Tokyo University of the Arts. She was awarded the Kume Prize in 2019 and the Ueno Geiyu Prize in 2021. Recent solo exhibitions include INSPIRER (Tokyo International Gallery, Tokyo, 2022); SPIRALE (Parco Museum Tokyo, Tokyo, 2022); Monochrome (Foam Contemporary, Tokyo, 2022); caché (tagboat, Tokyo, 2021); and Pomme dʼamour (Mograg gallery, Tokyo, 2020). Group exhibitions include Everything but... (Tokyo International Gallery, 2021).