Masterclass マスタークラス

Do you have a photographic project that you’re looking for a new perspective on? Or perhaps you have an idea taking shape that you haven’t yet developed further?

As photography becomes increasingly accessible, with advanced tools available to almost everyone, the essential questions of artistic practice—what we want to photograph and why—have become more important than ever.

This masterclass is designed for photographers and visual artists who are seriously engaged in making work, whether they have completed a project or are currently developing one, and for those seeking greater depth and clarity within an ongoing practice. Through dialogue with the instructor and fellow participants, the program focuses on the relationship between images and language, using articulation and critique as tools to sharpen artistic intention.

The masterclass unfolds across three sessions—before, during, and after KYOTOGRAPHIE—creating a cycle of input and output. Participants reflect on festival experiences, reassess their own work, and refine their projects through discussion and critique.

While photography is often a solitary practice, this masterclass fosters a community-based environment that strengthens and sharpens each participant’s work. By moving between making, thinking, and speaking about photographs, the program encourages participants to reconsider what it means to create work and what they wish to communicate.

Session 1 (Pre-Festival)｜Understanding Your Work Through Images and Words
Lecture / Articulation exercises / Group critique and dialogue

Session 2 (During the Festival)｜Translating Exhibition Experience into Your Own Practice
Sharing and articulating exhibition experiences / Group critique and dialogue

Session 3 (Post-Festival)｜Consolidating the Work and Moving Forward
Group critique and dialogue / Clarifying directions for future projects

Renowned for his portraits of musicians and actors, and widely regarded as one of the most influential photographers working today, Anton Corbijn will visit Japan for his exhibition at KYOTOGRAPHIE. On this occasion, we are pleased to offer an intimate, small-group masterclass designed for photographers actively working in portraiture.

This is a rare opportunity to hear him reflect on his half-century long career, how the exhibition in Kyoto came about, and receive direct critique from a world-class photographer in order to gain insights that can inform and strengthen your future practice. Applicants are required to submit a portfolio, which will be reviewed in advance by KYOTOGRAPHIE as part of the selection process.

This masterclass with Pieter Hugo explores the role of narrative and dialogue in photographic practice, examining how images construct, question, and complicate meaning through juxtaposition and symbolism.

Drawing from Hugo’s work, participants will be invited to bring projects finished or in progress, in digital and print formats, and explore approaches to building visual narratives that engage with identity, power, and representation. The masterclass also considers the ethical and conceptual implications of working with subjects and contexts.

Through lectures, discussions, and in-person critiques, the programme encourages participants to move beyond single images toward cohesive bodies of work, developing a deeper understanding of how a through- line can shape both the reading and impact of their photographs.

The relationship between activism and visual expression is longstanding. Its practice extends far beyond the realms of journalism and documentary, reaching into art and commercial fields as well. In these contexts, numerous works have emerged that not only address their subject matter but also deliberately embed a clear agenda in the way the message is conveyed.

Such works are the result of sustained experimentation, an ongoing search for narratives that can draw public attention to serious subjects that, at times, are visually unengaging. At their core lies a simple challenge: presenting a grave issue in an equally grave manner rarely garners attention.

Why, then, do works of fiction created in collaboration with those directly affected by social issues often resonate more deeply than nonfiction produced by those who are not?

This masterclass explores both the conceptual and practical tools required to visualise sustainable activism effectively. It aims to examine how visual expression can heighten public engagement with the society we inhabit. Participants will explore how participatory fiction, collaboration, and narrative strategy can create meaningful social impact.

Not limited to photographers and filmmakers, this masterclass is open to visual artists of all disciplines (e.g., illustrators, graphic designers) as well as researchers and academics, media professionals, NPO practitioners, social workers, and others who seek new ways to communicate social realities with impact.

This masterclass invites mid-career photographers and visual artists to engage with the working methods of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, whose practice is widely recognised for its exploration of abandoned and transitional urban spaces. Rooted in urban exploration (urbex), large-format photography, and long-term research, their work examines architecture and landscape as sites where history, ideology, and economic forces leave visible traces.

The program focuses on how scale, precision, and duration shape photographic meaning, and how architectural and landscape subjects can be approached beyond conventional documentary frameworks. In dialogue with their recent use of AI as a conceptual and research tool, the masterclass will also address how emerging technologies can be used to speculate on absent, altered, or unrealized spaces while maintaining photographic authorship.

Participants are expected to bring their ongoing projects and to engage critically with questions of methodology, ethics, and visual strategy. This masterclass is intended for visual artists seeking to expand documentary practice into more reflective, speculative, and technologically informed forms of image-making.

Held during KYOTOGRAPHIE, this masterclass explores street photography in Kyoto through guided hands-on shooting, short lectures, and group critiques led by a festival staff photographer.

Step into the layered energy of the street where overlapping gestures, shifting light, and fleeting encounters are abundant. Participants are encouraged to notice how relationships unfold within the frame, rather than seeking them out, to develop an understanding of how different elements can connect emotionally or atmospherically.

Layering, patience, colour, light, and intuition form the core of this masterclass. The camera is approached as a bridge: a way of responding to what is already happening.

Open to all experience levels and equipment, the masterclass emphasises observation, reflection, and exchange. Through sharing and discussing their work, participants deepen their visual awareness and explore how everyday encounters can become meaningful photographs.

Photographer Atsushi Fukushima turns his own life into his subject, approaching it consistently from a first-person, deeply subjective perspective. Rather than entering the lives of others as an observer, his work emerges from an inward gaze, one that reveals a candor and raw immediacy accessible only to the artist himself. Fukushima describes his process as “extremely simple and something anyone can practice,” grounded in his belief that photography can deepen self-expression and self-understanding.

In this masterclass, participants will explore how to visually articulate affirmation, doubt, accusation, and revelation directed toward the self, forms of expression that extend beyond what is typically described as shishashin (the “I-photograph”). Designed for photographers already documenting the margins of their own lives, the class invites them to consider and experiment with how narratives shaped through subjective experience can be translated and communicated to others through editing, sequencing and verbalising.