[2] In 1949, Ōtsuji joined the modernist exhibition society Bijutsu Bunka Kyōkai ("Art and Culture Association") and showed his photograph Itamashiki Buttai ("Painful Object").
[4] For example, his work Aishi ni tsuite ("About Feet") (1949) captures a raw chicken positioned upside down with its legs dramatically crossed in mid-air, thus offering a strange, almost lifelike view of the dead animal.
Another early series of photographs, shot in the leading Bijutsu Bunka member Nobuya Abe's studio in 1950, depict the future Jikken Kōbō member Hideko Fukushima and other women, both clothed and nude, posing within a geometric network of strings, thus appearing like dolls or puppets.
[4] Additionally, Ōtsuji continued to take on contract jobs, including photographing the pianist Alfred Cortot during his visit to Japan.
[3][7] His photographs ranged from portraits of artists to documentation of performances, putting him in contact with some of the most prominent figures in the Japanese art world.
In 1956, he took a series of close-up photographs of Lake Ōnuma, focusing on such images as slanted lines left behind on its frozen surface by ice skates.
[10] He built his own camera and even devised a cinematic device called an "autoscope" that was used to project images at the Sekiya Industries booth at the Japan International Trade Fair in Tokyo in 1957.
[12] His series Hitohako no kako ("Past of One Tin Can") was created for his first solo exhibition in 1977, and featured a 23-photograph sequence showing a can of memories being unpacked and individual elements examined by the camera – including old photographs.
[14] Exemplified by two photo books published in 1971 – Hibi (Day to Day) by Ōtsuji’s student Shigeo Gochō, and A Sentimental Journey by Araki Nobuyoshi – konpora photography’s clear, steady images were a contrasting response to the 'are-bure-boke' ( 'grainy/rough, blurry, out-of-focus') style of documentary photography published in Provoke.
Instead of Provoke’s negative, anti-establishment attitude, konpora photographers attempted to capture the world dispassionately, with simple, straightforward snapshots of commonplace, ordinary subjects.
[11] Ōtsuji's students include Yutaka Takanashi, Shinzō Shimao, Tokuko Ushioda, Shigeo Gochō and Naoya Hatakeyama.
In the last few years of his life, an initiative was established to preserve his negatives, and he received recognition through several major solo exhibitions and the publication of the photo book Kiyoji Ōtsuji (Japanese Photographers 21) by Iwanami Shoten in 1999.