Collection: Hayahisa Tomiyasu

Hayahisa Tomiyasu photobooks

Hayahisa Tomiyasu works with a quiet, methodical form of observation. His photography focuses on seemingly minor situations that gain weight through repetition, duration, and small changes over time. Rather than dramatic events, he is interested in how people use places, how habits form, and how public space is informally redefined in everyday life.

Tomiyasu is most closely associated with TTP, a long-term project made from the window of his former student apartment in Leipzig. Over several years he photographed the same ping-pong table, which was rarely used for sport and far more often as a meeting point, resting place, improvised surface, or social stage. That formal restriction is exactly what gives the work its clarity.

About the artist

Tomiyasu was born in 1982 in Chigasaki, Kanagawa. He studied photography at Tokyo Polytechnic University and continued at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, later becoming a master student of Prof. Peter Piller. Institutional biographies now place him between Zurich and Chigasaki.

Themes, method, and visual approach

• Everyday observation
• Public space and informal use
• Repetition and fixed viewpoint
• Social habits and human behaviour
• A restrained, dry, quietly humorous visual language

FAQ about Hayahisa Tomiyasu

• Who is Hayahisa Tomiyasu? Hayahisa Tomiyasu is a Japanese contemporary photographer born in 1982 in Chigasaki, Kanagawa. He studied in Tokyo and Leipzig and is best known for long-term observational work.
• What is Hayahisa Tomiyasu best known for? He is most strongly associated with TTP, a photographic series about a public ping-pong table in Leipzig that was published as a book and won the 2018 MACK First Book Award.
• What kind of photography does Hayahisa Tomiyasu make? His work sits between observational, documentary, and conceptual photography, with repetition, fixed perspective, and everyday behaviour in public space as recurring elements.
• Which book is the best place to start? For most readers, TTP is the clearest entry point because it shows Tomiyasu’s method, humour, and attention to social routine in a concentrated form. That last sentence is an editorial recommendation based on how the work is publicly framed.