Hiroji Kubota

Hiroji Kubota was born in Tokyo in 1939. During a visit by Magnum members to Japan in 1960, Kubota came to know René Burri, Burt Glinn, Brian Brake and Elliott Erwitt. After graduating in political science from Tokyo’s University of Waseda in 1962, Kubota moved to the US, with Elliott Erwitt as his sponsor. Kubota settled in Chicago, where he continued photographing while supporting himself by working in a Japanese catering business. 

He became a freelance photographer in 1965, and his first assignment for the UK newspaper The Times was to Jackson Pollock’s grave in East Hampton. In 1968, after award-winning coverage of the US presidential campaign, Kubota returned to live in Japan, where his work was recognized with a Publishing Culture Award from Kodansha in 1970. The next year, he became a Magnum Photos associate (he is now a contributor). 

Kubota witnessed the fall of Saigon in 1975, refocusing his attention on Asia. It took him several years to get permission to photograph in China. Finally, between 1979 and 1984, Kubota embarked on a 1,000-day tour, during which he made more than 200,000 photographs. The book and exhibit, China, appeared in 1985.

Kubota’s awards in Japan include the Nendo Sho (Annual Award) of the Japanese Photographic Society (1982), and the Mainichi Art Prize (1983). In 1989, Kubota became a full member of Magnum Photos. He photographed most of the Asian continent for his book Out of the East, published in 1997, which led to a two-year project, in turn resulting in the book Can We Feed Ourselves?

Kubota has had exhibitions in cities all around the world, including: Tokyo, Osaka, Beijing, New York, Washington, Rome, London, Vienna, Paris and many other cities. The retrospective book Hiroji Kubota: Photographer was published by Aperture in 2015. He is currently putting together important work for a few new books.