I'm a Japanese photographer based in Tokyo and London.
From portraiture to landscape, my dream-like imagery has been featured in Dazed Digital, i-D and Huffington Post Arts and exhibitions both in Europe and Japan.
I'm available for commissions and collaborations worldwide. Please do not hesitate to contact me to discuss your ideas and plans!
selected clients & Publications
Canterbury Of New Zealand Japan
Cloud & Victory
Ear Papillonner
Ei Pulishing
Elefant Records
ELLE Japan
Genkosha
GUP Magazine
Hammock Music
Humbert Humbert
The Guardian
Leftovers
Lomography
NME
Rock Action Records
S for SHOKO
SHOKO
The Sunday Herald
The Sunday Times
TOKYO CULTURALART by BEAMS
Toy Tokyo
WeTransfer
Selected Interviews & Features
1883 Magazine 1 2 3
Creative Commission
Feature Shoot
The Fox Is Black 1 2
Huffington Post Arts 1 2
Hyperallergic
i-D
It's Nice That 1 2 3
My Modern Metropolis
Not Just A Label
Pijama Surf
Wallpaper*
We Heart 1 2 3
Zupi
Artist Statement
Photography is a vehicle for me to render my aesthetic and philosophical vision. With discerning aesthetic principles, photographic imagery can stimulate our perception and foster our curiosity, encouraging us to contemplate the things around us with greater philosophical depth.
Through photography, I want to deal with the state of ambiguity that lies beneath the feelings and emotions such as nostalgia, sentimentality, euphoria and loneliness. It can be colours, light or the mood and narrative of a certain place that trigger a mixture of these feelings and emotions. The scenery I photograph is somewhat whimsical and delicate, blurring the boundaries between reality and fantasy. It is the state of ambiguity itself. By presenting an image of the world that bears ambivalence between reality and fantasy, I hope to invoke the viewer’s own perception and emotion, stirring up trains of thought within them.
Testimonial
I see Takeshi Suga’s photography as an inviting lighthouse, supplying an endless stream of colour, to a world that can at times feel grey and lonely.
Takeshi was born in 1982 in Kobe, Japan where he lived until following his cinema studies to Glasgow in 2008.
While at work on his Masters in European Cinema, Takeshi gradually began exploring and experimenting with photography.
His passion for live music was fed and well watered by the fertile, touring circuit soil in Glasgow and Takeshi went on to accompany Mogwai, Frank Turner and The Wombats photographing their experiences on tour.
Takeshi’s live work has since been a prominent feature in NME and national newspapers such as The Guardian and The Sunday Times.
While music and films have always been and remain to be Takeshi’s main sources of inspiration, one might think he had been a horticulturalistin in a previous life, as nature and the full psychedelic spectrum of colour that he is able to capture on camera, is a reoccurring subject in his work.
The prevalence of the colour red in his work has reminded of its power and grace in the films 'Le Ballon Rouge’ (France/1956) and ‘Rumblefish’ (USA/1983).
An admirer of French films, and in particular those of Jacques Tati, Takeshi’s curiousity in French culture, brushes its paint strokes of Parisian vibrance, French humour and a childlike playfulness and spontaneitythat is so key and intrinsically Tati.
written by Alessi Laurent-Marke