Dates: Sep 6 – Oct 11, 2025
Location: Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film
Opening reception: Saturday, Sep 6, 18:00 – 20:00

*Conversation: Ittetsu Matsuoka x Takahiro Ito (Curator of Photography at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum)   
Date and time: Saturday, Sep 20, 14:00 – 15:00
Location: AXIS Gallery (AXIS building 4F)
By reservation only
Book here
This event will be conducted in Japanese only.

Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by Ittetsu Matsuoka from Saturday, September 6, to Saturday, October 11, 2025. This exhibition, his third at the gallery, will feature approximately 30 recent photographs, centered on those taken this year. These images reflect Matsuoka’s long-standing photographic vision with even greater clarity and intensity.

Matsuoka is known for his work in the tradition of private photography, which takes the form of snapshots. Using his long-favored Olympus μ (mu) film camera, he produces images characterized by a consistently pale, muted color palette and a unique sense of suspension. His subjects are varied, including landscapes from his travels, people close to him, nudes, and abstract images created by chance through light leakage.

Photography, as a visual language, has the power to capture the world with clarity by precisely recording a single instant. Matsuoka, however, embraces blurred subjects, soft focus, unintended exposures, and other unexpected phenomena that occur on-site. In doing so, he keeps the contours of his images deliberately soft, offering glimpses of the world with a light touch rather than assigning fixed meanings. His photographs convey a gaze that affirms all things equally, whether in the spotlight or in shadow, reminding us that beauty can be found even in places we tend to overlook or leave outside the frame.

When we communicate with others by representing both the external world and our inner selves through linguistic signifiers, crucial nuances and peripheral meanings are lost in the process. Words, when too sharply defined, can cause harm. Through the nonverbal medium of photography, Matsuoka interprets the world from his own unique perspective, unraveling fixed ideas and values shaped by language, and revealing unfamiliar aspects of people and scenes.

Ittetsu Matsuoka was born in Gifu Prefecture in 1978 and graduated from the Department of Photography at Nihon University College of Art. Alongside his work as a photographer, he operates Therme Gallery, which he founded in 2008. While photographing scenes from his everyday surroundings, he continues to approach the world with an even, unprejudiced gaze. His solo exhibitions include “Marii,” BOOKMARC, Tokyo, (2018); “Marii,” Morioka Shoten, Tokyo, (2018); “Purple Matter,” Daitokai, Tokyo, (2014); “Yasashiidake,” Ruroudou, Tokyo, (2014); and “Tokyo μ Ryushi,” Therme Gallery, Tokyo (2011). He is currently based in Tokyo.

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