Kikuji Kawada

is a Japanese photographer. He co-founded the Vivo photographic collective in 1959. Kawada's books include Chizu (The Map; 1965) and The Last Cosmology. He was included in the New Japanese Photography exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1974 and was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Photographic Society of Japan in 2011.

Life and work Kawada co-founded the Vivo photographic collective in 1959 with Akira Sato, Eikoh Hosoe, Ikko Narahara, Akira Tanno and Shomei Tomatsu. In The Photobook: A History, Vol. 1, Martin Parr and Gerry Badger describe Chizu as being amongst four books that "constitute photography's most significant memorials to the defining event in twentieth-century Japanese history" and that it is "the ultimate photobook-as-object, combining a typical Japanese attention to the art of refined packaging with hard-hitting photography, text and typography – a true photo-text piece. No photobook has been more successful in combining graphic design with complex photographic narrative." O'Hagan wrote in The Guardian that it is "perhaps the most intricately designed and powerfully evocative Japanese photobook ever [ . . . ] By turns impressionistic and surreal, the book demands a degree of patient, silent contemplation that echoes the act of remembering." Cosmos of the Dream King. Tokyo: Asahi Sonorama, 1995. Kikuji Kawada. Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten, 1998. . Text in Japanese. Japan, 1951–1960. Nazraeli Press Six by Six, set 5 v. 3. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2014. . Edition of 100 copies. Remote Past A Memoir 1951–1966. Tokyo: Case, 2016. With an afterword by Rei Matsuda, in Japanese and English. Edition of 1000 copies. Chizu (Maquette Edition). London: Mack, 2021. .

Awards Lifetime Achievement Award, Photographic Society of Japan awards Kukuji Kawada: Last Cosmology, L. Parker Stephenson Photographs, New York, 2014/15. Kikuji Kawada: Los Caprichos-Instagraphy-2017, P.G.I Gallery, Tokyo, 2018. Kikuji Kawada: Then & Now, L. Parker Stephenson Photographs, New York, 2016. Kikuji Kawada: 100 Illusions, Cannon Gallery S, Tokyo, 2018.

Group exhibitions 1957: Jūnin no me (10人の眼, Eyes of ten), Konishiroku Photo Gallery, Tokyo, 1957. Organised by Tatsuo Fukushima. 1974: New Japanese Photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1974. Directed by John Szarkowski and Shoji Yamagishi. Included the work of fifteen artists. Museum Folkwang, Essen, 2015; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden, Germany, 2015.