Tsutomu Yamagata
Photobooks and artist publications by Tsutomu Yamagata, Tokyo-based photographer — available at Lokator100, an independent bookstore based in Germany.
Tsutomu Yamagata — Photography from Tokyo
Tsutomu Yamagata is a Tokyo-based photographer, born in 1966, whose work moves across surveillance, urban observation, and social documentation. Trained in law at Keio University, he has developed a photographic practice concerned with watching and being watched — the structures of visibility that organise contemporary life. His books are published primarily through Zen Foto Gallery, the Tokyo publisher that has been central to his output since 2012.
About the Work
Yamagata's practice is methodical and sustained. Across multiple bodies of work — from Thirteen Orphans to Ten Disciples to My Little Cosmos — he returns to questions of framing, distance, and the social weight of the photographic act. His 2019 book Surveillance - Tsutomu Yamagata, published jointly by Zen Foto Gallery and Case Publishing, is among his most direct engagements with those themes. His work has been exhibited internationally and held in permanent collections including the UNM Art Museum in New Mexico.
Why Lokator100 Carries This Work
Lokator100 selects titles on the basis of sustained attention, not market cycles. Yamagata's photobooks reward that kind of reading — they are not books that exhaust themselves on first encounter. They belong in a working library of contemporary Japanese photography.
Collecting Notes
All publications in this collection are produced by Zen Foto Gallery, a Tokyo-based publisher with a consistent record in Japanese photobook production. Edition specifics and condition are documented individually per listing. For a broader view of available titles, the Photobooks collection provides additional context across the shop's photography holdings.