Kosuke Okahara: blue affair

Kosuke OKAHARA (b.1980, Tokyo) is based in Kyoto. Okahara grew up in Tokyo and started his career as a photographer after studying Education at university. He has been pursuing stories on the theme of Ibasyo, which, in Japanese, refers to physical and emotional space in which one can exist. In 2010, he was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Fellowship for this long-term project Ibasyo about Japanese girls who self-harm. He received a Getty Images Grants for Editorial Photography for his works on Fukushima in 2012, after the nuclear disaster. His long-term work on Colombia also received the Pierre & Alexandra Boulat Grant in 2014. He has published six monographs and several art books. His 10-meter scroll publication Vanishing existence was exhibited at the art book exhibition in the Bavarian State Library in Munich alongside artists such as Picasso, Andy Warhol, and Keith Haring; it is now housed in the library’s permanent collection.