Seiichi Nakamura

About 20 years have passed since I started using inkjet. The early product could not even compare with silver halide photography. For me, it was a product with a better quality than instant photographs and conveniently allowed us to print bigger sizes. Then printers and the paper constantly and rapidly improved; now ink jet paper is an excellent media to stabilise images. In particular, for colour photographs, it has far more durability compared to silver halide photography. It means so much to my photographs where coloration is a very important element.

My current most favourite product, GOLD COTTON SMOOTH, can bring out rich images and favourable contrasts under any conditions with its matt surface. The quality of the image is guaranteed wherever photographs are set out by my clients.

Another favourite product is GOLD FIBRE SILK that has a soft surface and is very much suitable to reproduce smooth human skin with favourable contrasts. Its colour reproduction ability is no doubt to be acknowledged as far superior.

In the future, I would like to try much bigger size photographs and am determined to produce photographs with which I can use the full potential of this wonderful paper.

Seiichi Nakamura was born in 1960 in Tokyo. He joined a photography club at his high school and was deeply attracted to photography and darkroom processing. Then he came across Ilford. Although he successfully entered Rikkyo University, faculty of sociology, he could not give up his dream to be a photographer. While studying, he worked as a casual staff in the advertising division at cosmetic company Shiseido and, after graduation, he officially joined the company after gaining experience as an assistant then as a contract photographer. He worked on the production of advertising for the company and photographing for their corporate culture magazine “HANATHUBAKI” which conveys Shiseido’s sense of aesthetics. Then he left the company at the end of March 2006 and set up his company, Nakamura Photograph Office. Now he is a freelancer and works on commercial photographs. He keeps producing the colorful art works that bring out his original world by studio lighting. He started printing his works with inkjet printer in 2000 when he was still working for Shiseido. His technique and style is showcased in various media.

He received many advertising photography awards including the ADC award and the Dentsu award. He is a member of Japan Advertising Photographers’ Association. He works as a full time instructor at Musashino Art University and an instructor at Shashinkan Sousei Jyuku that provides training seminars to young people who want to work at photo studios.

While photographs have various genres, I use studio lighting for my photographs to create my original world. However, my world is not an unknown world created by computer graphics but that is a world everyone has experienced before and is in your memory.

The themes are water, flower, sometimes a rock, Japanese paper or glass. All these objects are just around us and I use the lighting in a similar way to natural light over those objects. You might understand if I say this idea is based on microcosm that shares the idea with “Bonsai” or “Hakoniwa (miniature landscape garden) ”.

I use only one shot method and never use any digital image compositions. I hope my photographs expand your imagination.