Shōtarō Akiyama

was a renowned Japanese photographer. Over a career spanning more than half a century he became one of Japan's most popular photographers, known for his portraits of actresses and magazine models, his nude and glamour photography, and photographs of flowers, which he took up as a life's work from his mid-forties onward. The year he graduated, anticipating conscription, he privately published the photobook , a work he described as "a headstone to his youth."

Beyond his editorial work, Akiyama held senior positions in the Japanese photographic establishment over several decades. He was a founding member of the Japan Photographers Society (1950) and of the Japan Advertising Photographers Association (1958), serving as vice-president of the former from 1963 to 1964 and as president of the latter from 1971 to 1979, and he served in other executive roles in the Japan Photographic Society and the All-Japan Photographic Federation. He also served for many years as head of the Nihon Photo Arts Technical School.

Akiyama died of a heart attack on January 16, 2003, while serving as a juror, at a hospital in Chūō, Tokyo, at the age of 82.

Photography Akiyama's work was characterized by what his obituary in the Year Book of Japanese Art described as "elegant lyricism": he avoided excessive technique or staging and sought to discover beauty in his subjects' natural appearance, an approach he maintained consistently from his early years to the end of his career. In his magazine cover portraits of women he was credited with being among the first to use black backgrounds, a choice previously considered taboo, which helped win him wide public popularity.

Though best known for his women's photography, Akiyama also produced distinguished portraits of men, collected in (1977) and (1980). From his mid-forties onward he devoted growing attention to photographs of flowers, which became a life's work and a new body of representative pieces in his later years.

Honours and legacy In 1971 Akiyama received the award of the first exhibition of the Japan Advertising Photographers Association together with the Tokyo Art Directors Club award. In 1974 he received the fifth Kōdansha Publishing Culture Award for his cover serial in Shūkan Gendai and his series "The Countenances of Writers" in Shūkan Shōsetsu. He was awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1986 and the Order of the Rising Sun, fourth class, in 1993.

Retrospective exhibitions of Akiyama's work were held at the Yokohama Civic Art Gallery in 1991, the Tokuyama City Museum of Art in 1998, and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in 2002. The Machida Photo Salon, opened in 1999, includes a permanent display room devoted to him.