Katsuji Fukuda

Background

Katsuji Fukuda was born on January 11, 1899 in Hofu, Yamaguchi, Japan.

Career

Katsuji Fukuda moved to Tokyo in 1920, and worked at Takachiho Seisakujo (later renamed Olympus), where he worked making thermometers and developed an interest in photography, buying a Vest Pocket Kodak. The 1923 Kantō earthquake impelled him to leave the company and move to Kansai.

Katsuji Fukuda ran a photographic studio in Sakai and Osaka, but this failed. He then worked as an editorial assistant on Hakuyō Fuchikami's periodical Hakuyō. A photograph he took in 1925, shown in an exhibition (titled 日本写真美術展覧会, Nihon Shashin Bijutsutenrankai) at Daimaru department store (Osaka) and elsewhere, won the Ilford Diamond Prize the following year. Katsuji Fukuda then worked as a commercial photographer in Sakai and Hiroshima.

Katsuji Fukuda moved back to Tokyo in 1933, where, influenced by Modernist trends from Europe, he pursued a successful career as an advertising photographer. A series of photographs in Asahi Camera starting in 1936 and including portraits of Setsuko Hara and Takako Irie was very popular, and the next year Fukuda turned this into a book on photographing women that became a best-seller.

After the war, Katsuji Fukuda published collections of nude studies and more books on photographic technique. He also experimented with color.

Katsuji Fukuda continued working in his old age. He died on 26 December 1991.

Works

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    1949

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    1971

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