HISAO SUZUKI, THE PHOTOGRAPHER

Hisao Suzuki has lived in Barcelona for over 20 years.

Born in 1957 in Yamagata, a northern province in Japan, he finished his academic studies in the Tokyo College of Photography (Tokyo Shashin Gakko). He then worked in the studio of the photographer Tohru Minowa, specializing in gastronomy.

After a few years practicing and perfecting his work in this studio, he went to Barcelona in 1982 in order to observe the works of Gaudí.

His trip to Barcelona was no accident. His interest in the Catalan architect was triggered by an exhibition of his works that had been organized by the prestigious photographer Eiko Hosoe in the Yokohama City Hall in 1978.

It was during this period that Hisao Suzuki began to photograph architecture in Barcelona, centering on the works of Gaudí.

This introduction into the fascinating world of modernist architecture – and especially the spaces created by Gaudí – led him in 1985 to leap into the equally fascinating world of contemporary architecture.

His participation began with a photographic record of the designs and the construction of the Palau Sant Jordi, the Barcelona Olympic sports stadium created by the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki.

One year later his collaboration with the architectural journal “El Croquis” began, and he soon became their principal photographer. “El Croquis” has since become an architectural journal of immense international prestige.
A professional must always feel challenged. In Suzuki’s case, the impulse he received from Eiko Hosoe’s vision of Gaudí led him towards specializing in the photography of ‘space’ as defined by architecture.

Photography is based on reality, on concrete facts, on the existence of a model, and it is this that perhaps differentiates it from other arts. But when it is a question of ‘space’, where reality has three dimensions, the photographer’s interpretation becomes complicated and crucial, if only because the photographer’s ultimate realization will be in two dimensions.

A photographer may take one of two stances: either demonstrate a work within its reality and its environment, or demonstrate the image of the work that the photographer himself has created. In Suzuki’s case the former is true, for his work is a true testimony and documentation of reality.